Riff-raffy

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Synonym of riffraffish.

    ""Not Tunny and I," retorted the lady; "they are noisy, riffraffy, and smell of cowheel and codfish, - uncomfortable to polite minds, disrelishable to respectable society, and dangerous to genteel young ladies."

Synonyms

All synonyms
riffraffish

Example

More examples

""Not Tunny and I," retorted the lady; "they are noisy, riffraffy, and smell of cowheel and codfish, - uncomfortable to polite minds, disrelishable to respectable society, and dangerous to genteel young ladies."

Etymology

From riffraff + -y. First use appears c. 1850. See cite below.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.