Crossword clues for scoundrel
scoundrel
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Scoundrel \Scoun"drel\, n. [Probably from Prov. E. & Scotch scunner, scouner, to loathe, to disgust, akin to AS. scunian to shun. See Shun.] A mean, worthless fellow; a rascal; a villain; a man without honor or virtue.
Go, if your ancient, but ignoble blood
Has crept through scoundrels ever since the flood.
--Pope.
Scoundrel \Scoun"drel\, a. Low; base; mean; unprincipled.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1580s, skowndrell, of unknown origin. One suggestion is Anglo-French escoundre (Old French escondre) "to hide, hide oneself," from Vulgar Latin *excondere, from Latin condere "to hide" (see abscond). The main objection to this theory is that hundreds of years lie between the two words.
Wiktionary
n. A mean, worthless fellow; a rascal; a villain; a person without honour or virtue.
WordNet
n. a wicked or evil person; someone who does evil deliberately [syn: villain]
Wikipedia
Scoundrel is a thriller book written by English author Bernard Cornwell. The story of the book is set in Europe, in 1990, just after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. It features Paul (Paulie) Shanahan, a Bostonian, who had moved to Europe in his role a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA). In his recent past, a woman, Roisin, had been caught by the Libyans, and found out as a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative. Under the torture, and shortly before her execution, she had claimed Paul Shanhaan was also a sleeper member of the CIA. As such, all his terrorist contacts had shunned him, expecting him to return to the United States, as his cover was blown. As the story begins, he has been in the cold for three years, when he is contacted by an old Libyan contact, with a job for him.
The job, on the face of it, is to sail a boat carrying five million dollars of Libyan gold, to Miami, to allow the PIRA to give it as payment to the Cubans, in exchange for fifty-two Stinger missiles. However, as the project pans out, Shannan becomes suspicious that the project is not what it seems.
Usage examples of "scoundrel".
All the young debutantes this season, all the young men who do want to get married, their mamas and papas and other assorted escorts, and a few scoundrels like our sweet Jeremy whom you should avoid.
Oh, when I think that her folly drove me to sea, to do my best for her, and that I was nearer death for that woman than ever man was, and lost my reason for her, and went through toil and privations, hunger, exile, mainly for her, and then to find the banns cried in open church, with that scoundrel!
But since the breeze is dead contrary at present and likely to remain so until after sunset, I shall stand in, say farewell to the brigs and schooners, and then give those scoundrels in the town and the barracoons a salute that will put the fear of God into them.
On leaving the place, he brought me for supper to an inn where we met four scoundrels of his own stamp.
He believed Hill to be a cunning scoundrel who had overreached the police for some purpose of his own by accusing Birchill, and who, to make his story more probable, had even implicated himself in the supposed burglary as a terrorized accomplice.
He handled the traitor contemptuously as a perjured, suborned witness, a false servant, a man who, as he proceeded to show, was a scoundrel steeped in crime, whose word was utterly worthless, and who, no doubt, had been bought to bring these charges against his sometime master.
At all events, free, rich, and certain of presenting myself before the bishop with a respectable appearance, and not like a beggar, I soon recovered my natural spirits, and congratulated myself upon having bought sufficient experience to insure me against falling a second time an easy prey to a Father Corsini, to thieving gamblers, to mercenary women, and particularly to the impudent scoundrels who barefacedly praise so well those they intend to dupe--a species of knaves very common in the world, even amongst people who form what is called good society.
Memoirs of Giacome Casanova, Chevalier de Seingalt, Knight of the Golden Spur, Prothonotary Apostolic, and Scoundrel Cosmopolitic.
You could remoralize twenty blackhearted scoundrels and turn them into righteous men.
And that rascal Lafont has always passed for a good sansculotte, which is how the two-faced scoundrel comes to have been left in peace at Chavaray.
This was apparently in the nature of a scalawag toast, for the six scoundrels guzzled their pots in unison, Shelyid joining in, with a ravenous fervor which, it can hardly be doubted, caused the angels to ring the dome of heaven with a united peal of outrage.
He was more worried about those who might be on the other side of the law, the various scoundrels and sharpies who would be more likely to have heard the latest scuttlebutt and be looking to profit from it.
Having so long and so assiduously kept corrupting their servants, is the government still unassured of their readiness to be scoundrels?
I am amazed that you would deem it unexceptionable to present to Miss Doyle any scoundrel who asks for the favor.
He could not afford to break openly with Ventana, and it must have been a dreadful shock to him when he learned that the scoundrel had plotted not only to destroy the ship but to murder his wife at the same time.