Roister-doister

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A swaggering buffoon; a foolish braggart. archaic, derogatory

    "A very artificiall beginning, to moove attention or to procure good-liking in the reader, unlesse he wrote onely to roister-doisters, and hacksters, or at least to jesters, and vices."

Synonyms

All synonyms
roister

Example

More examples

"A very artificiall beginning, to moove attention or to procure good-liking in the reader, unlesse he wrote onely to roister-doisters, and hacksters, or at least to jesters, and vices."

Etymology

After Ralph Roister Doister, a 16th-century comic play by Nicholas Udall. See roister (“to engage in riotous behaviour”).

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