raffishadj.

1795 E. Davies Elisa Powell I. xii. 297 They returned to the parlour, laughing, and saying one to the other, ‘Did you ever see any thing so raffish! He will certainly become a mere student.’

1818 Blackwood's Edinb. Mag. 3 527 A raffish sort of a fellow calling himself Menippus.

1879 M. E. Braddon Cloven Foot xv. 130 An older man, of somewhat raffish aspect.

1933 S. Walker Night Club Era 35 The raffish battalions of gyps, ex-holdup men, clip joint experts, towel-swingers and cheap thugs who handled illegal liquor from 1920 on.

1941 Ann. Amer. Acad. Polit. & Social Sci. 215 231/2 The Commodore's picturesqueness, which sprang from a raffish zest for accumulation for its own sake.

1974 R. A. Caro Power Broker vi. xxxii. 701 How long would Mr. Moses last under an administration that was dominated by the more raffish and corrupt elements of Tammany Hall?

1991 Gay Times Mar. 56/2 He..had raffish sexual skeletons in the closet which he didn't want rattled.

1906 Bookman Oct. 179/2 One's attention is riveted upon Jessie Incell, a woman reporter, for she inevitably invites comparison with Nancy Olden, the somewhat raffish heroine of In the Bishop's Carriage.

1937 Harper's Mag. June 101/1 The raffish, free-for-all girl finds a devoted husband.

1958 Spectator 27 June 831/2 [He] displayed a certain raffish elegance in his long, dark jacket and dog-tooth trousers.

1989 Observer 3 Sept. (Colour Suppl.) 24/1 Sag Harbor has a more raffish, agreeable, even faintly Bohemian air.

1997 Daily Tel. 27 June 21/1 In a James Bondish sort of way,..[he] combines a raffish charm and an aristocratic sang-froid.

2000 High Country News 9 Oct. 9/2 ‘I crossed the first time when I was 12,’ he says, flashing the sort of raffish grin that women love.

1822 Blackwood's Edinb. Mag. Apr. 479/2 Observe what a raffish-looking crew the modern Whigs are.

1925 Times 4 Nov. 12/2 A deplorably raffish-looking person, who proceeded to improvise his ‘criticisms’ over a very large whisky-and-soda.

1998 N.Y. Rev. Bks. 22 Oct. 24/4 Man Rayish double exposures presumably portraying the subconscious of his raffish-looking subject Berenice Abbott.

1897 S. R. Crockett Lads' Love xi. 116 Her water-can, raffishly a-dangle at her side.

1931 T. Craven Men of Art viii. 194 She is like a rich and charming woman reduced to beggary and striving raffishly to regain her charms and her revenues.

1993 Sci. Amer. Aug. 78/1 His face, once youthful and raffishly handsome, set off by dark, pomaded hair and deep-set eyes, had been disfigured.

1848 Times 21 June 6/2 She is not destitute of cunning, but an excess of girlish spirits distinguishes her from the rest of the dramatis personæ, who, with more consummate worldly wisdom, move easily through an atmosphere of ‘raffishness’.

1936 R. C. K. Ensor England, 1870–1914 x. 304 Those again concerned with the fashionable surface of life and letters in London are struck by the revulsion from puritanism to raffishness, and speak of the ‘naughty nineties.’

1999 J. Arnott Long Firm ii. 59 I invited him to White's... It retains a touch of aristocratic raffishness that has all but vanished from the rest of clubland.