Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US) bad-tempered, grumpy; thus soreheadedness n., bad temper.

1835		Dublin U. Mag. Apr. 469: So he took up his parable ’gainst the Lord Mayor, / With a gentleness worthy a soreheaded bear.
1855		Oregonian 17 Feb. 2/2: [This] is another reason for special complaint with the sore-headed gentry of the Salem ‘clique’ [DA].
1860		Marysville Appeal 31 Mar. 2/2: The patriots of the Customs House [are] suffering from the sore-headedness which so often follows an unsuccessful attempt at ascendency in the political scale [DA].
1882		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 4 Mar. 2/1: The best the sorehead press can do is imitate us.
1886		Lantern (N.O.) 6 Oct. 6: When she has a sour and soreheaded husband pulling the other way.
1899		W.D. Foulke Life of Oliver D. Morton 417: There was the soreheaded Republican, whose neglected claims for office had shaken his faith in civilization.
1900		A.H. Lewis ‘Jess’ in Sandburrs 20: Looks like you’ve been as locoed as a passel of sore-head dogs for more’n a week now.
1905		Sun. Times (Perth) 12 Mar. 1/1: In the full tide of fiction [the landlady] promised to wed thirteen successive boarders [and] since results were posted 27 soreheaded suitors have been searching for her skin.
1906		S. Ford Shorty McCabe 157: They was a sore-head trio for fair, after that.
1936		R.F. Adams Cowboy Lingo 226: We have also heard the expression[s], ‘sullen as a sore-headed dog’.
1940		W.R. Burnett High Sierra in Four Novels (1984) 302: Send her back to L.A. I’ve seen soreheaded dames spoil too many good jobs.
1961		G.L. Coon Meanwhile, Back at the Front (1962) 104: Some sorehead clerk back in Pendleton transferred me.
1991		J.R. Elting Amateurs to Arms! 84: Napoleon’s defeat [...] had freed the Royal Navy to give the United States its undivided and increasingly soreheaded attention.
2000		W. Safire Scandalmonger 57: Cobbett is still soreheaded about what I wrote about Washington after he signed that treaty.