What is "raffish"

Usage examples of "raffish".

Brammington darted a raffish glance at Alleyn and accepted a fresh cigarette.

It turned out to be too small and gave him the look of an untidy, raffish civilian - a high-school expellee with a limp.

It spoke of Lauries sorrow at his passing, but it ended on a major chord, a note of triumph, then a silly little coda that made all who knew Roald laugh, for it somehow captured his raffish nature.

Not quite as raffish as Greenwich Village in its heyday, nor as freewheeling as the East Village during the Sixties, SoHo is a yeasty warren of streets, unexpected alleyways, and old two- to five-story brick buildings.

Lady Truelove found her natural volatility of spirit drew her, like a leaf upon the bosom of the river, into the whirlpools of fast company and high living in the company of a dangerously raffish crowd.

Minogue guessed Gallagher for the one who looked like a graduate student, subtly raffish and smart, mustachioed and clad in denim.

Since Lord Byron’s marital difficulties were among the most scandalous on dit of the town—it being widely rumored that he was, at the earnest solicitations of his friends, on the point of leaving the country—this remark at once made the discussion seem undesirably raffish, and everyone was relieved when Hubert, disclaiming any liking for poetry, went into raptures over the capital novel, Waverley.

With her right hand holding her left arm behind her untanned back, the lesser nymphet, a diaphanous darling, would be all eyes, as the pavonine sun was all eyes on the gravel under the flowering trees, while in the midst of that oculate paradise, my freckled and raffish lass skipped, repeating the movements of so many others I had gloated over on the sun-shot, watered, damp-smelling sidewalks and ramparts of ancient Europe.

Sometimes they would drive all the way to Windsor, and stop at roadhouses that featured cocktails and ferocious piano-playing and raffish dancing—roadhouses frequented by gangsters involved in the rum-running, who would come up from Chicago and Detroit to make their deals with the law-abiding distillers on the Canadian side.