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Raffish sounds like it should mean "resembling raff." But what is raff? Originally, "raff" was a word meaning "rubbish"; it derived from Middle English "raf," and it was being used for trash and refuse back in the 1400s. Around a century later, English speakers were also using the word riffraff to mean "disreputable characters" or "rabble." The origins of "riffraff" are distinct from the "rubbish" sense of "raff"; "riffraff" derived from an Anglo-French phrase meaning "one and all." By the mid-1500s, the similarities between "raff" and "riffraff" had prompted people to start using the two words as synonyms, and "raff" gained a "rabble" sense. It was that ragtag "raff" that gave rise to the adjective "raffish" in the late 1700s.
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Examples of raffish in a Sentence
David Amsden, Travel + Leisure, 14 May 2024
The present headquarters of the Andy Warhol Factory are, despite the raffish image, surprisingly elegant and ordered: typewriters click, business machines whir, telephones ring and are answered by trim and efficient secretaries.
—Stephen Birmingham, Town & Country, 10 Aug. 2023
Although Clodagh ignores the warnings of the General’s raffish agent Mr. Dean (Alessandro Nivola), isolation and illness soon take their toll, with the haunting atmosphere of the palace particularly affecting volatile Sister Ruth (Aisling Franciosi).
—Clark Collis, EW.com, 21 Sep. 2020
But his hopes had been stirred up watching leading men in Hindi matinees: a grandiose Dilip Kumar in Naya Daur, a raffish Mithun Chakraborty in Mrigayaa.
—Hazlitt, 28 Apr. 2022
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Cite this Entry
“Raffish.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/raffish. Accessed 22 Nov. 2024.
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raffish
adjective
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