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Rowdy   /rˈaʊdi/   Listen
Rowdy

noun
(pl. rowdies)
1.
A cruel and brutal fellow.  Synonyms: bully, hooligan, roughneck, ruffian, tough, yob, yobbo, yobo.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Rowdy" Quotes from Famous Books



... very rude, the redbird's bearing makes me think so. He is standing very straight and holding his head very high, but he isn't saying a word—of course. He is too much of a gentleman to quarrel with a rowdy like the blue jay. Just hear how he is domineering! These little song sparrows must surely be ladybirds—they are talking back in such a saucy twitter. Can you hear them? I wish you could see them. They are turning their pretty heads from side ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks

... is the corner man on the leader's right, opposite three men in scarlet ties on his left. One of these three is the Frenchman. Of the remaining two, who are both English, one is argumentative, solemn, and obstinate; the other rowdy ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... assailant, the matter is at an end. In China, all the injured party has to do is to point out the village—or, if a town, the ward—in which he was assaulted. Then the headman of such town or ward is summoned before the authorities and fined, proportionately to the offence, for allowing rowdy behaviour in his district. The headman takes good care that he does not pay the fine himself. In the same way, parents are held responsible for the acts of their children, and householders for those of ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles

... Mr. Bernard Shaw who, in commenting on the rowdy reception of the Irish players in some American theatres, spoke of Lady Gregory as "the greatest living Irishwoman." She is certainly a remarkable enough writer to put a generous critic a little off his balance. Equal mistress ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... it if they did," he replied despondently, "at your age. And then your mother is so trustful and pleasant. Take those parties where she is so much—roof frolics and cocoanut groves and submarine cafes; they don't come to any good. Rowdy." Linda studied him coldly; if he criticized them further she would leave. He mopped a shining brow with a large colorful silk handkerchief. "It throws me ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer

... think, than the mere kindness of giving, finer because it requires discretion, nobler because it requires self-elimination. The more I saw of Miss Gore the more deeply was I impressed by her many amiable qualities. She had an ear for Jerry, but aware of my complete elimination by the rowdy upon my left, found time to relieve the awkwardness of my situation and contribute something to the pleasure of what for me would otherwise have ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs

... this evening," she confided to Sybil. "I was so afraid they'd forget their promises and begin that rowdy teasing. I believe we've broken the tradition of that, thank goodness. I hope it may ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... Bedim cauld Boreas' blast; When hailstanes drive wi' bitter skyte, [glancing stroke] And infant frosts begin to bite, In hoary cranreuch drest; [hoar-frost] Ae night at e'en a merry core [one, gang] O' randie, gangrel bodies [rowdy, vagrant] In Poosie Nansie's held the splore, [carousal] To drink their orra duddies. [spare rags] Wi' quaffing and laughing, They ranted an' they sang; Wi' jumping an' thumping The ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... and critical manner, discussed contemporary literature, and what Plato and Aristotle, judging by; their writings, would have been likely to think of it. And once again I felt as if I were in the 'High' at Oxford, and was almost inclined to wish that Marnier was the rowdy type of undergrad, who ducks people in water troughs and makes bonfires ...
— Desert Air - 1905 • Robert Hichens

... filled quickly, till by and by it would have been impossible to find standing room for a child. A student of human nature is never long in finding out the dominant characteristic of an audience,— whether its attitude be profane or reverent, rowdy or attentive, and the bearing of the four or five thousand here assembled was remarkable chiefly for its seriousness and evident intensity of purpose. The extreme orderliness of the manner in which the people found and took their seats,—the entire absence of all ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... their wings. There were goldfinches, blackbirds, thrushes, with their young—the plumpest, clumsiest, ruffle-feathered little blunderers, at the age ingrat, just beginning to fly, a terrible anxiety to their parents—and there were also (I regret to own) a good many rowdy sparrows. There were bees and bumblebees; there were brilliant, dangerous-looking dragonflies; there were butterflies, blue ones and white ones, fluttering in couples; there were also (I am afraid) a good many gadflies—but che volete? Who minds ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... place to be a bit rowdy," replied the superior sex. "It's part of a man's education. And I don't try to look as if butter would n't melt in my mouth. You're just the reverse; you're hypocrites. 'Woe unto you hypocrites!' the Bible says. But it's troubling me a good deal to ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... were again en route, and at intervals during the day, opening their now feeble and sleep-infected eyes, could hear the hoots of the two cattlemen, the sound of winds, the rowdy gait of the crooked-legged oxen, and stoppages for drink or rest, and anon an obstruction, with shouting and fuss. It was night before the waggon came to rest on a jetty, the elaborate ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... course you couldn't call it rowdy, could you? We'll send you to do the asking. Those dimples of yours generally get what you want, and on the whole I think you're the pattern one of us, and the most likely to ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil

... places of business, with a preoccupied air, and sonorous greetings to their friends. Genteel pigs, with an extra curl to their tails, promenaded in pairs, lunching here and there, like gentlemen of leisure. Rowdy pigs pushed the passersby off the sidewalk; tipsy pigs hiccoughed their version of "We won't go home till morning" from the gutter; and delicate young pigs tripped daintily through the mud as if they plumed themselves upon their ankles, and kept themselves particularly ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... my rowdy town. Never was there such a place—such organized success built on so much individual failure. From boss to water-boy we were failures all; so we understood each other. We haven't sworn brotherhood, but we're pulling together. Some of us had known no law, and most of us had ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie

... Brotherton had, no doubt, given rise to a great deal of scandal and a great deal of amusement. Pountner and Holdenough were to some extent ashamed of their bellicose Dean. There is something ill-mannered, ungentlemanlike, what we now call rowdy, in personal encounters, even among laymen,—and this is of course aggravated when the assailant is a clergyman. And these canons, though they kept up pleasant, social relations with the Dean, were not ill-disposed ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... teens and early twenties were the same memories Jay Allison looked back on. I didn't think so. People forget and remember selectively. Week by week, then, and year by year, the dominant personality of Jay had crowded me out; so that the young rowdy, more than half Darkovan, loving the mountains, half-homesick for a non-human world, had been drowned in the chilly, austere young medical student who lost himself in his work. But I, Jason—I had always been the watcher behind, the person Jay Allison dared ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... then, I'm mighty glad I cleared 'em out. I like to see a game now an' then, but I want it clean—no rowdy work." ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield

... it was finished. Yes, I got tired. But no, I never grudged the work, thank God. I was glad to help the Adjutant, bless her! in my little way. To keep the hall in order, and to go on the door humouring the rowdy ones, not keeping anyone out, that was my work for the Adjutant, and I rejoiced to do it. And she was very thoughtful. When, after big demonstrations, the hall wanted extra cleaning, she would organize a scrubbing brigade of about twenty brothers and sisters, who would bring their own buckets and ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter

... "Come, Mother, don't let your prejudices carry you that far. Money's money. Old Vavrika's a mighty decent sort of saloonkeeper. Nothing rowdy ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather

... Bowery, which had been eminently respectable in its earlier history, lost caste. Decent people left it, and the poorer and more disreputable classes took possession. Finally, it became notorious. It was noted for its roughs, its rowdy firemen, its courtezans—in short, it was the paradise of the worst elements of New York. The march of trade and improvement along the east side of the city has effected a partial reformation, but still the ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... read "The Sorrows of Werter" in that little "Three-penny" edition published by Messrs. Cassell! It was in a Barge, towed by three Horses, on the River, between Langport and Bridgewater, in the County of Somerset! The majority of the company were as rowdy a set of good-humored Bean-Feasters as ever drank thin beer in a ramshackle tavern. But there was one of them—this is twenty-five years ago, reader!—a girl as fragile as a peeled Willow-wand—and teased ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys

... was much frightened when the "rowdy," as he foolishly called the man, was struck on the head by a brick, and badly hurt. All the boys now ran away, and James skulked across the fields to his home. 8. As he drew near the house, his sister Caroline came out to meet ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... awaited at the Tuileries The issue, for I trusted the Nation's Common Sense; And although the rowdy Faubourgs tried a few of their Tom-fooleries, My soldiers soon let light into each ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various

... the poetic temper of Englishmen is to say that they couldn't do this even for beer. They can sing in chorus, and louder than other Christians: but they must have in their songs something, I know not what, that is at once shamefaced and rowdy. If the matter be emotional, it must somehow be also broad, common and comic, as "Wapping Old Stairs" and "Sally in Our Alley." If it be patriotic, it must somehow be openly bombastic and, as it were, indefensible, like "Rule Britannia" or like that superb song (I never knew its ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... took the hint and quitted the store. Thereupon the long-limbed clerk verified the taunt of "counter-jumper" by clearing it at a bound. "Will you engage not to repeat that rowdy (blackguard) talk in the store while I am the master, ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... a small flock of goats provides milk and occasionally fresh meat. There are two horses (one a native of the island) to perform casual heavy work; the boat has a shed into which she is reluctantly hauled by means of a windlass to spend the rowdy months; there is a buoy in the bay to which she is greatly attached when she is not sulking in the shed or coyly submitting to the ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... fight every moment, and if one had been started there is little doubt that it would have been short and bloody, for the conduct of the rowdy portion of the travellers had enraged the decent persons, to whom the thought of drunkenness and ribaldry at such a time was abhorrent, and they were quite ready to undertake the work of pitching the demoralized ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... from Illinois, and was a comely young fellow, full of dash and daring; rough and rowdy, generous and jolly, overflowing with spirits and ready for a free fight ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott

... place might have run up a long and tearful account against Providence, fate, circumstances—whatever sentimentalists choose to arraign rather than themselves. Five-and-twenty years before, Jack Flood had been a rowdy undergraduate of Brasenose College, Oxford; in his third year of residence, with more than a fair prospect of being ploughed—or, in the language of that generation, "plucked"—at the end of it; a member of the ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... mole. I don't think your husband, whoever he is, can brag much of his taste in the female line. I'm sure I don't want to see him, so you can keep him locked up, you jealous thing. It's some old rowdy, I s'pose, that nobody else would look at. I hate you, and always did. Don't never come near me. There!" And she left ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various

... rowdy tune of the Posthorn Polka the different couples were dashing to and fro—all a little drunk with emotion and champagne; and, as if fascinated, Alice's eyes followed the shoulders of a tall, florid-faced man. Doing the deux temps, he ...
— Muslin • George Moore

... at 10 a.m. It was a rowdy morning. The guns were still unusually lively. While we were having breakfast shells were bursting three or four hundred yards away from our hut, and we could hear occasional H.E. dropping as far back as Poperinghe ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd

... hall taken, when an unforeseen difficulty arose. Eminent man after eminent man was asked to give the address, but all with one consent began to make excuse. Spirit and flesh quailed before so difficult and rowdy an audience on so difficult and perilous a subject. At last the professor who was chiefly interested implored me to give the address myself, or the whole thing would go by default. Under these circumstances I had no choice but to ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... the water. It will be a very interesting spectacle to see the Earth "rounding to," with her head to the air, off Jupiter, while the Moon is sent off laden with mails and passengers for that planet, to bring back the return mails and a large party of rowdy Jupiterians going to attend a grand prize fight in the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various

... brought disaster upon her, made love to her, and hung about her small home, sometimes leaning upon the rickety gate to talk and laugh with her, sometimes loitering with her in the streets or taking her to cheap picnics or on rather rowdy excursions. She wore the excited and highly pleased air seen in young women of her class when the masculine creature is paying court. She spent her wages in personal decoration, she bought cheap feathers and artificial flowers and remnants on "bargain days," ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... at Glen Alpine. These are poison-oak, rattlesnakes and poisonous insects. The rowdy, gambling and carousing element are equally absent, for should they ever appear, they speedily discover their lack of harmony and ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... of oysters—you always find a preponderance of dogs where you find the most poor people. Philadelphia's the place for dogs; in the suburbs, especially after night, if you escape from the onslaught of the rowdies, you will find the dogs a still greater and more atrocious nuisance. No rowdy, or gentleman at large, in the Quaker City, feels finished, without a lean, lank, hollow dog trotting along at their heels; while the butchers and horse-dealers revel in a profusion of mastiffs and dastardly curs, perfectly astounding—to us. This brings us to ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... so bold", said Tom, "I wouldn't go anyst the cussed court. It's nothin' at all, but the meanness and envy o' that rowdy priest over the river there. He's jest mad, cos the people come over here to git fodder instid o' goin' to his empty corncrib. They like to hear yer talk better than they do him, and that's the hull on it. I'd let the condemed critter and ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage

... of life in order their fair-haired boy may be thought such a "nice young man," and so "genteel." Their judgment, however, is never in error with regard to some of the neighborhood "rapscallions." Their heads are perfectly level on the question of "those rowdy boys." Their advice is as sound as it is free. They can predict with greater accuracy than can any of the second-sightseers as to the ultimate end of these embryo ladies' men, good-for-nothings, sharpers, spendthrifts, and paupers. They know the process full well whereby these boys can be ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill

... day's shooting. One is looking forward to one's bed. As one opens the door, however, a ghostly laugh comes from behind the bed-curtains, and one groans inwardly, knowing what is in store for one: a two or three hours' talk with rowdy old Sir Lanval—he of the lance. We know all his tales by heart, and he will shout them. Suppose our aunt, from whom we have expectations, and who sleeps in the next room, should wake and overhear! They were fit and proper enough ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... Trinitarians without knowing it. "In Christianity," says the Dean, "no thing is of real concern except that which makes us wiser and better." That is precisely what the sceptic says, yet for that coroners reject his service on juries, and rowdy Christians try to keep him out of Parliament when he has a legal right to enter. But the Dean adds: "Everything which does make us wiser and better is the very thing which Christianity intends." That is, Christianity means just what you like ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote

... pulls at the strong, black tobacco, and began to reconsider his notion about smashing up the service. He found the religious skipper was as good a fisherman as anyone in the fleet; the talk was free from that horrible cant which scares wild and manly men so easily, and the copper-coloured rowdy almost enjoyed himself. ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman

... army out of its shirt-sleeves, the President's manner was a cause of endless irritation. Still more serious was the effect of his manner on many men who agreed with him otherwise. Such a high-minded leader as Governor Andrew of Massachusetts never got over the feeling that Lincoln was a rowdy. How could a rowdy be the salvation of the country? In the dark days of 1864, when a rebellion against his leadership was attempted, this merely accidental side of him was an element of danger. The barrier it ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... of bulls. It meant passing months away from wife and children, in a solitude only occasionally alleviated by a Sabbath spent in a synagogue town. It meant putting up at low public houses and common lodging houses, where rowdy disciples of the Prince of Peace often sent him bleeding to bed, or shamelessly despoiled him of his merchandise, or bullied and blustered him out of his fair price, knowing he dared not resent. It ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... countless shadowy figures who came and went as silently as ghosts. Spaceman's Row was where suspended spacemen and space rats, prospectors of the asteroids for uranium and pitchblende, gathered and found short-lived and rowdy fun. Here, skippers of rocket ships, bound for destinations in deep space, could find hands willing to sign on their dirty freighters despite low pay and poor working conditions. No questions were asked here. Along Spaceman's Row, hard men played a ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell

... high as dis here house. Us sung all de time us was shuckin' corn. Dere was a lot of dem old shuckin' songs. De one us sung most was: 'Whooper John and Calline all night.' Marse Billy, he give 'em coffee and whiskey all night and dat made 'em git rough and rowdy. Den de shucks did fly. Us had one more grand feast when de last ear of corn had done been shucked. Dere ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration

... was on its wane; already cars were arriving and departing, laden with the very youngest and the oldest people; there was perceptibly more room on the dancing-floor of the veranda, which was populated chiefly by the younger set; in the supper-room the more rowdy crowd hung on with numbers undiminished and enthusiasm unabated if liberally dampened; about the grounds there was far less movement, far more lingering in sequestered nooks and shadows. Ecstatica, for one, had folded her tent, liberated her black ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... grotesque and annoyingly expressed passion for her. Kramer takes his son to task and, in one of the noblest scenes in the modern drama, wrestles with the boy's soul. In the third act the inn is shown. Its rowdy, semi-educated habitues deride Arnold with coarse gibes. He cannot tear himself away. Madly sensitive and conscious of his final superiority over a world that crushes him by its merely brutal advantages, he is goaded to self-destruction. In the last act, in the presence ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann

... majestically along the street, knocking her off her feet and into a snowdrift. It was Aunt Phoebe, coming to make a formal afternoon call. She sat bolt upright in the snow and adjusted her lorgnette to see if by any chance her grandniece could be one of those rowdy children. When she discovered that it was not only Hinpoha, but her mother as well, frolicking so indecorously, she was speechless. Mrs. Bradford started to make an abject apology, but the sight of Aunt Phoebe sitting in the snowdrift ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey

... He was tremendously proud of Gloria, proud that she never failed to eclipse whatever other women might be in the party, proud that men were always glad to revel with her in great rowdy groups, without any attempt to do more than enjoy her beauty and the warmth of ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... after "sounding" them as to whether they were willing to join. But always, when election evening—the last Tuesday of term—drew near, he began to have his doubts about these fellows. This one was "rowdy"; that one was over-dressed; another did not ride quite straight to hounds; in the pedigree of another a bar-sinister was more than suspected. Election evening was always a rather melancholy time. After dinner, when the two club servants had placed ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... it back to the cabin. As he set the bucket on the shelf, he noticed that the mirror which hung above the bucket was broken into a thousand pieces. No doubt a bullet had come in through the chinking. Was this a declaration of war? Or had some rowdy just been showing off? They examined things carefully, but found nothing missing but the chips, not even food. Ham could not imagine why the kindling had been removed from the hearth, for he was positive that no fire ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley

... apparently pleasing them much, but being behind him on the platform (they wanted me to go close to him but I would not), I could not hear the point of his jokes. Then we went to the Academy of Music, also a very large place, where a more rowdy lot were listening very quietly, however, to General Butler. Certainly no meetings of such size could take place in England with such entire absence of noise or policemen, of carriages, or cabs. We went to bed very tired having ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh

... and done, as he leaves in that paltry fragment of the grumbling organist, the impression of a certain eternal human energy. Energy and joy, the father and the mother of the grotesque, would have ruled the poem. We should have felt of that rowdy gathering little but the sensation of which ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton

... station and the mellow golden glow of Sophie Forbes' yellow parlor lamp. Then he turned and looked straight down his own street, past the post-office, the tin shop, the dry-goods store to the spot where a faint light seeped through drawn curtains and faint rowdy noises came from ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds

... brightly dressed and her head adorned by a wreathed Union Jack, whirling lean arms in an ecstasy of irritability, her shrill voice mounting from scream note to scream note. A sickness of soul cried from her restless over-taxed body. She was but one unit of a whole rowdy company. Even this night was used by them to grab at something to fool men—to smother God in their hearts. Just a play, a pretense, yes, a pretense of power, especially that; they had no thought beyond excitement, and that to me seemed only the first step. ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... "beggin' yer pardon, sir, what ken ye as to what they think? Ye may ken better, but maybe they dinna; for haena ye jist allooed that sic conduc' as I hae describit is no fit, whaever be guilty o' the same, whether rowdy laddies i' the streets, or craturs ye canna see i' the hoose? They may think they'll want their banes by an' by though ye ken better; an' whatever you wise folk may think the noo, ye ken it's no that lang sin' a' body, ay, the best ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald

... finished my business with him. I shall not punch his face off him. I'll not flatter him to that extent. A good American reserves his fists for a man-fight with a real man." He shook the captive, holding him at arm's-length. "Here's a young fool who has been throwing stones at windows. Here's a fresh rowdy who has been sticking out his tongue at authority. I know exactly what ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... out of the boat, Tariro," said the trader; "it's mighty frightened I was havin' so much money in the house at wanst, wid all them rowdy Yankee sailors from the whaleships ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke

... ever you heard. The General Brooks was put in charge of an officer and some men; a sail was hoisted to keep her in hand, so that she wouldn't drift into the other ship; and in the midst of all the rowdy-dow we were told that if we liked we might go on board the ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton

... down the hill, disturbing the rabbits busy in the dew, and bursting through the cables of gossamer that tried to stay her. A kestrel hovered over the gorse, and she marked a badger on the hillside shuffling home before Man and his Dogs began the old rowdy-dowdy ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant

... persons whom little Mrs. Timmins was bent upon asking, were Mr. and Mrs. John Rowdy, of the firm of Stumpy, Rowdy and Co., of Brobdingnag Gardens, of the Prairie, Putney, and of Lombard ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Jeremy's conversion to the big idea took place on the way across the desert to Jerusalem—a journey that took us a week on camel-back—a rowdy, hot journey with the stifling simoom blowing grit into our followers' throats, who sang and argued alternately nevertheless. For, besides our old Ali Baba and his sixteen sons and grandsons, there were Jeremy's ten pickups from Arabia's byways, whom he couldn't ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy

... or castor oil from the medicine room. I had to sit beside their beds when they heard the truth; I had to see the women crumple up and go limp; I had to tell the blind child's father that he did it, to bolster up the weak girl, to rebuild the wife's broken ideals, to suppress the rowdy and the roysterer, to hear the vows of the boy who was paying for his first mistake, and listen to the stories of the pimp and the seducer. What made syphilis terrible to the many really fine and upright spirits in the mass thus flung ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes

... man's life, the more fearsome the legends. He suffered, none the less. This was why he seldom entered the premises of the Alpha and Omega Club where, quite apart from his objection to Parker's poison and the loose and rowdy talk of the place, he was liable to encounter the lady's stepbrother. Of course he knew perfectly well what he ought to have done. He ought to have imitated the example of other people who behaved like scoundrels and openly gloried in it. That ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... masonry, filled the whole huge square. On each of its four sides it put in sheepish and chop-fallen countenance a row of boarding houses. In any other city the neighborhood would have been intolerable because of the noise of the rowdy children. But in Washington the boarding house class cannot afford children; so, few indeed were the small forms that paused before the big iron Severence gates to gaze into the mysterious maze of green as far as might be—which was not far, because the walk and ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips

... incongruity of Enriquez' extravagant attentions if ironical, and their equal hopelessness if not, seemed to me plainer than ever. What had this well-poised, coldly observant spinster to do with that quaintly ironic ruffler, that romantic cynic, that rowdy Don Quixote, that impossible Enriquez? Presently she ceased playing. Her slim, narrow slipper, revealing her thin ankle, remained upon the pedal; her delicate fingers were resting idly on the keys; her head was slightly thrown back, and her narrow eyebrows prettily knit toward the ceiling ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... be more serene, nor yet more biting, than that with which the artist touches off the desperate efforts to attract attention of the rowdy group of callow youths whom he names, with a flash of inspiration, "The Dare-Devils" (page 10). Of "The Suburbanite," to the writer's mind perhaps the most subtly accurate character-study of all, the artist ...
— Frank Reynolds, R.I. • A.E. Johnson

... shady sporting men, latter-day coachmen, pink and paragraphic journalists, and middle-aged ladies, who, having once been, or been once, on the stage, still affect the skittish manners of a ballet-dancer. He is a man of short speech, but his humour is as broad as his drinks are long. He affects a rowdy geniality and a swaggering gait, by which he seeks to overawe the inoffensive. Though he has but a small stock of intelligence, he passes for a wit amongst his associates by dint of perpetually repeating an inane catch-word. With this, and a stamp of the foot, he will greet a friend ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various

... doubt the rowdy element was brought in from the outside," said the Rector. "Hardly one of Hitchin's workpeople is a Wyck man. Otherwise I should have to apologize to Waddington for ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair

... with guns. Freymann advised him, as he had sent away the trusted squadron of Csernicseff, not to commence operations now with the cavalry, to take the village as the basis of his operations, and to use his infantry against the rebels. A series of surprises then befell Karr. He saw the despised rowdy crowd approaching with drawn sabres, he saw the coolness with which they came on in the face of the fiercest musketry fire. He saw the headlong desperation with which they rushed upon his secure position. He recognized that he had found here heroes instead of thieves. But what annoyed ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various

... Christmas-time an' just be'ind the Rains; Ho! get away you bullock-man, you've 'eard the bugle blowed, There's a regiment a-comin' down the Grand Trunk Road; With its best foot first And the road a-sliding past, An' every bloomin' campin'-ground exactly like the last; While the Big Drum says, With 'is "rowdy-dowdy-dow!"— "Kiko kissywarsti don't you hamsher argy jow?" Oh, there's them Injian temples to admire when you see, There's the peacock round the corner an' the monkey up the tree, An' there's that rummy silver grass a-wavin' in the wind, ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling

... character—it was deemed expedient to issue a proclamation of martial law in Natal. This was followed by the seizure of the Transvaal National Bank at Durban, a most exciting episode, which caused quite a ferment in the town. All around the offices a curious and somewhat rowdy rabble congregated, and it was found necessary to guard the premises with Bluejackets and marines. However, after the place had been searched, the men, looking strangely transmogrified in their kharki, returned ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... world. If you'd heard and seen them talking about it as I have, you'd not doubt their earnestness. Besides, you have no idea how needful you are to the community. The fact is, it is composed of such rough and rowdy elements—though of course there are some respectable and well-principled fellows among them—that nothing short of a power standing high above them and out o' their reach will have any influence with them at all. There are so many strong, determined, and self-willed ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne

... all right, boy," he finally remarked coldly, "but I am not so easily deceived. You want time to cover up your tracks. Perhaps you even hope I may invite you and your rowdy companions to my house, and that the occasion will allow you to satisfy your vulgar curiosity to ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen

... get hold of 'em,' cried the indignant constable. 'I'd give 'em what for. Two windows 'ave they broke wi' their stones and their sluggin', an' one of 'em in the shop o' poor old Mrs. Dean. The old woman has hard enow work to make a livin' without rowdy young ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore

... with a gentleman fighting a rowdy, the gentleman has all to lose and nothing to gain. If you don't live among your own class, Peter, your life will simmer down to ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling

... dem yankees a-gwine and comin'. Dey come to our Marster's house and stole his good mules. Dey tuk what dey wanted of his meat, chickens, lard and syrup and den poured de rest of de syrup out on de ground. Atter de war was over Niggers got so rowdy dem Ku Kluxers come 'long to make 'em be-have deirselfs.' Dem Niggers and Kluxers too ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration

... Saved April 24th, 1889. Taken away from home at the age of eight years, and made his way to Texas. Here he took up life amongst the Ranches as a Cowboy, and varied it with occasional trips to sea, developing into a typical brass and rowdy. He had 2 years for mutiny at sea, 4 years for mule stealing, 5 years for cattle stealing and has altogether been in gaol for thirteen years and eleven months. He came over to England, got mixed up with thieves and casuals here, and ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... boisterous, animal nature grew with his body and he revelled in the things of brawn. He responded joyfully when he was called on to eject some rowdy from the bar-room, and begetting confidence with each new victory, he began to have a vast opinion of himself. About this time a powerful rival of Downey's, known as the Dummer House, claimed attention at the other end of town. One was located to catch the inbound from the west; the other, ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton

... didn't swear then, he might very well have sworn, and I'll be sworn but he did on that occasion; and it was very pardonable too. Well, he swears at the drunken man, not knowing his condition, and the drunken man rolls and reels like a rowdy, and gives it to him back, and then they get at it. Your nephew, who is a stout colt, buffets him well for a time, but Forrester, who is a mighty, powerful built fellow, he gets the better in the long run, and both come down together in the road. Then Forrester, being uppermost, sticks his thumb ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... Although rowdy revelry is discountenanced by the authorities Dawson City can be gay enough both in summer and winter. In the open season there is horse-racing along First Avenue, where notwithstanding the rough and stony course and deplorable "crocks" engaged, large sums of ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... Peninsula to the sea and back, the episode of the Spanish people, the rowdy supper party, had one effect, however: it had made so decided a break in the routine that Keith found himself thrust quite outside it. He had worked feverishly all the week, at about double speed; and in ordinary course would have gone on working feverishly at double speed ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... was a difficulty in supporting even two. Both depended almost exclusively on the patronage of the court and the courtiers. From the theatre, therefore, we can only argue directly to the small circle of the rowdy debauchees who gathered round the new king. It certainly may be true, but it was not proved from their behaviour, that the national morality deteriorated, and in fact I think nothing is more difficult than to form any trustworthy estimate of the ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... ruffled her feathers and sniffed when Judith's name was mentioned. It was perfectly clear to her that all the ruffians of the West would be quick to take the advantage arising from the ridiculous condition of a rowdy girl assuming men's pantaloons. ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory

... whirled on him, white with anger. "That will do!" he exclaimed. "Clear out! I do not intend to allow any such riff-raff as you to order me to—Oh, pray do not be alarmed, ladies! This rowdy is not likely to assault me. Nothing will happen, I assure you. Clear out, ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... for all the venomed darts of rowdy Sophs, magnificent Juns, and lazy Senes.—The ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... drive a team of greyhounds, and to sit at a table and feed myself with a silver folk. One half-hour I was made to be a gentleman, and wear a dress suit, and tip my hat to the ladies, and the next I would be expected to do something entirely different; be a policeman, maybe, and arrest a rowdy dog in boxing-gloves. Oh, I couldn't begin to tell you the things I was expected to do, from drilling like a soldier to wheeling a doll carriage and smoking a pipe. Sometimes when I grew confused, and misunderstood the signals and did things all wrong, the ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston

... open night, with the dim forms of many ships, and stars hanging in a web of masts and cordage; at the other, the garish illumination of a row of public-houses: Au Bonheur du Matelot, Cafe de la Marine, Brasserie des Quatre Vents, and so forth; rowdy-looking shops enough, designed for the entertainment of the forecastle. But they seemed to promise something in the nature of local colour; and I entered the Brasserie ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... swagger is no more pronounced now than it used to be in skirts. She has always had bloomer instincts. You don't pretend to declare, do you, that there never were unconventional women, ill-dressed and rowdy women, before the new woman was heard of? That is the great mistake you make. These women are not new women. We've always had them. We never, unfortunately, ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell

... filled me with sorrow. I hate military belongings, and am disgusted at seeing the great affairs of a nation put out of their regular course. Congress to me is respectable. Parliamentary debates—be they ever so prosy, as with us, or even so rowdy, as sometimes they have been with our cousins across the water—engage my sympathies. I bow inwardly before a Speaker's chair, and look upon the elected representatives of any nation as the choice men of the age. Those muddy, clattering dragoons, sitting at the ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope

... indeed! Every girl's mother was there, and the more discreet always left before there was too much drinking. Yes, it was gay, gay!—but sometimes dangerous. Ha! more times than a few had Monsieur John knocked down some long-haired and long-knifed rowdy, and kicked the breath out of him for looking saucily at her; but that was like him, he was so brave ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable

... fire-bell, his heart grew bitter at the thought of the still bitterer night. He did not think it proper for one of his conservative nature to violate all the rules of health and self-respect by going out in such rowdy weather. ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes

... was working every day for nothing, and thought that he would do better. He described his master (Washington Bonafont) as a sort of a rowdy, who drank pretty hard, leaving a very unfavorable impression on Henry's mind, as he felt almost sure such conduct would lead to a sale at no distant day. So he was cautious enough to "take the hint in time." Henry left in company with nine others; but after being ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... dirty, ill-smelling beerhouse. They were celebrating something or another, were jingling their money, discussing future earnings, and laughing uproariously. One table was especially absorbed in its noisy gaiety. There sat the celebrated town-rowdy Nil Krasavtsev with three of his friends. They drank, and sang hooligan songs, then paid their bill and went out. One could hear their ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub

... estate, conceived that he would most benefit his fellow-creatures by combining the professions of the pulpit and the press—by preaching on Sundays and at odd times, while he acted as outdoor reporter to The Rowdy Puritan on every lawful day. Being a man of great earnestness and enterprise, he soon rose in the ranks of the Salvation Navy; and at one time commanded an evangelical barge on the benighted canals of our country. Finally, he made England almost too hot to hold him, by the original forms of ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang

... hearty souls, for the most part, often obscene and rowdy as they sat and sang around the camp fire. Mose had never been a rude boy; on the contrary, he had always spoken in rather elevated diction, due, no doubt, to the influence of his father, whose speech was always serious and well ordered. Therefore, when the songs became coarse he walked ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland

... there is a curious convention by which American interviewing makes itself out much worse than it is. The reports are far more rowdy and insolent than the conversations. This is probably a part of the fact that a certain vivacity, which to some seems vitality and to some vulgarity, is not only an ambition but an ideal. It must always be grasped that this vulgarity is an ideal even more than it is a reality. ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton

... hoped that Mr McKeith's lady would not find the hotel too rowdy. It was one of the two-storied buildings, and had a bar giving onto the street, and a veranda round both upper and lower storey. A number of Bushmen and loafers were drinking in the bar, and others were on the ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... that he be made to kneel and say his prayers to God, and immediately after is requested to pay ten dollars, and to declare that he will to the utmost of his ability oppose the admission of any confirmed drunkard, professional gambler, rowdy, convict, felon, abolitionist, negro, Indian, minor, or foreigner to membership in any ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... the door of this establishment a little way open and looked at the rather rowdy company gathered round the zinc counter, all with flushed faces and all talking loudly. She did not venture inside, but in a clear voice asked, "Is M. Geoffroy here?" No definite answer was forthcoming, but the men turned round, hearing her enquiry, and seeing her pretty figure began to ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

... he stopped to light a cigar from the pipe of a dirty admirer, and then, bowing obsequiously to the group, he stalked off in a rowdy way in the ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... trysting for a Bacchanal, A feast of Pan or Colias or Genetyllis, The tambourines would block the rowdy streets, But now there's not a woman to be seen Except—ah, ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes

... Mr. Whistler is often "rowdy" and unpleasant; in his last combat with Mr. Oscar Wilde—("Oscar, you have been down the area again")—he comes off a palpable second; his treatment of 'Arry dead and "neglected by the parish" goes far to prove that ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler

... at all! Another rigmarole in which women are mixed up! You know the little singer of Chalons, called Nichoune? She made her first appearance at La Fere, and since then the creature has roved through the rowdy dancing-saloons of Picardy, of the Ardennes—you must ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre



Words linked to "Rowdy" :   assaulter, rowdiness, muscleman, aggressor, muscle, assailant, disorderly, attacker, plug-ugly, tough guy, bullyboy, skinhead, yobbo



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