[syn: crusty, curmudgeonly, gruff, ill-humored, ill-humoured]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:
Crusty \Crust"y\ (-[y^]), a.
   1. Having the nature of crust; pertaining to a hard covering;
      as, a crusty coat; a crusty surface or substance.
      [1913 Webster]
   2. [Possibly a corruption of cursty. Cf. Curst,
      Curstness.] Having a hard exterior, or a short, rough
      manner, though kind at heart; snappish; peevish; surly.
      [1913 Webster]
            Thou crusty batch of nature, what's the news?
                                                  --Shak.
      [1913 Webster]
WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):
crusty
    adj 1: having a hardened crust as a covering [syn: crusted,
           encrusted, crusty, crustlike]
    2: brusque and surly and forbidding; "crusty remarks"; "a crusty
       old man"; "his curmudgeonly temper"; "gruff manner"; "a gruff
       reply" [syn: crusty, curmudgeonly, gruff, ill-
       humored, ill-humoured]
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0:
112 Moby Thesaurus words for "crusty":
   abrupt, aggressive, backed, barnyard, bearish, beastly, biggety,
   bitchy, bluff, blunt, brash, brief, brusque, calcified, callous,
   calloused, cankered, cantankerous, case-hardened, cavalier, cheeky,
   choleric, churlish, chutzpadik, coarse, cocky, contemptuous,
   crabbed, cranky, cross, cross-grained, crusted, crystallized, curt,
   cussed, derisive, dirty, disagreeable, disrespectful, dour,
   excitable, facy, feisty, filthy, flip, flippant, fossilized, foul,
   fractious, fresh, gally, granulated, gratuitous, gross, gruff,
   hardened, harsh, hornified, huffish, huffy, impertinent, impudent,
   incrusted, indurate, indurated, irascible, irritable, lapidified,
   malapert, mean, nervy, ornery, ossified, pert, perverse, petrified,
   rank, raunchy, reinforced, rigidified, rough, rude, sassy,
   saturnine, saucy, sclerotic, set, severe, sharp, short, smart,
   smart-alecky, smart-ass, snappish, snippety, snippy, solidified,
   spiteful, spleeny, splenetic, steeled, stiffened, strengthened,
   surly, testy, toughened, truculent, ugly, uncalled-for, vitrified,
   waspish, wise-ass