Definition of Raffish

raffish (adjective) - resembling, or having the character of, raff, or a raff; worthless; low

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How can raffish be used in a sentence?

  1. Again, his raffish companions might have shot me on sight.

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  2. Bookshelf A lamentation for the lost world of raffish newspapering.

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  3. I, on the other hand, am motivated by a charming and possibly even raffish need for approval.

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  4. It began with the still raffish Mr. Zerbe, who regaled me with gay tales of glamorous old New York.

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  5. Hal's friends at the royal court were of the slightly raffish society Queen Elizabeth liked to surround herself with.

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  6. The raffish ambience of the Astoria Greeks is certainly not the same as the Manhattan venues, and you have to get there.

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  7. (Though they most likely never met, the two lived within a few blocks of each other in that raffish artists 'neighborhood.)

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  8. But the Hix spirit does not animate Brown's formal dining room, which was virtually empty the night we were there and anything but raffish.

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  9. He is the swaggering gaucho, the tango singer, the raffish outsider determined to play by his own rules in defiance of stultifying authority.

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  10. In the 18 months since his diagnosis with oesophageal cancer, Christopher lost his beautiful voice, his raffish air, his optimism and swagger.

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  11. Hanging above the table was a raffish Santa on a sleigh filled with little presents: pull a string and your own present would fall into your lap.

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  12. Dillinger is so full of cocky self-confidence that when he finally comes face to face with Purvis in prison, the exchange is surprisingly raffish.

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  13. But Mr. McAnuff and his collaborators seem not to have realized that there's nothing stale about Loesser's raffish songs or Abe Burrows's wisecrack-studded book.

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  14. Joining the cast, and adding some very appealing swagger, is Charlie Cox as Owen Sleater, a raffish Irish opportunist who ingratiates himself into Nucky's household.

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  15. Despite his short life, Toulouse-Lautrec was enormously productive and succeeded in developing a style uniquely suited to the celebrity culture of this raffish district.

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  16. The total impression was of a raffish but not unattractive sexuality, so strong that, although she wore no scent, she brought into the room her own female and individual smell.

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  17. Something of the devotion of the parents is clearly visible here, as well as the almost raffish informality of the Australian golden boy and heir to Kilmany Park and Craigellachie.

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  18. The past few years have seen Daniel Sinsel discard hia dark enchantment with male porn stars: black-eyed young men who gazed from his canvases like raffish Pans with a taste for S&M.

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  19. As a child swot, though, I felt a responsibility to my family to enter a "respectable" profession I dutifully studied law but found journalism's raffish camaraderie more accommodating.

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  20. We were a raffish crew, but they were sober men and grim women, with never a tin pan or a rope out of place, everything lashed down hard and the kids peeping solemnly over the tailboards.

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  21. Hardberger assembles a raffish polyglot crew to sneak past officials, distract guards with tight men and loose women, and steal the ship in question back to the legal safety of international waters.

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  22. Anna Chancellor lends the vodka-swilling, heavy-smoking Blackwood a mixture of raffish charm and iron determination that explains why she attracted equally powerful men such as Freud and Robert Lowell.

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  23. David Bedella also exudes the right raffish charisma as Wilson, whom Anita Loos described as "America's most fascinating outlaw", and Michael Jibson is a perfect foil as the architecture-loving Addison.

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  24. With the kind of luck for which teenagers everywhere can only pray, Dad turns out to be a raffish, motorbike-riding restaurateur played by Ruffalo, whose loose, relaxed masculinity has rarely been better used.

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  25. A mustachioed man in a pullover meets a wavy-haired blonde to produce a figure with an oddly raffish cavalier look; a middle-aged woman with a complex hairdo acquires the aquiline nose of the actor she obscures.

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  26. It is the premiere of the latest hit by silent star George Valentin Jean Dujardin, a Douglas Fairbanks-type smoothie whose trademark is his raffish smile and his sidekick, an expressive little Jack Russell terrier.

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  27. I suggested "The King's Speech," and, not wanting to spoil it with too many details, gave a shorthand description: Colin Firth as King George VI, who has a terrible stutter, and Geoffrey Rush as a raffish Australian speech therapist.

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  28. Here in Brooklyn, where -- along with Manhattan -- baseball-as-we-know-it evolved, the game remains an inexhaustible topic when boys and men of summer meet and chat along our bluestone sidewalks and in our barrooms both raffish and classy.

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  29. Chrysler's new Dodge Challenger, a reincarnation of a raffish 1970 model, hit dealerships last fall, just in time for the credit-market collapse and Chrysler's subsequent bankruptcy and sale to the United Auto Workers, Fiat SpA and the federal government.

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  30. Cait Murphy's "Scoundrels in Law" paints a colorful portrait of this era, showing us stories of human frailty, hypocrisy and stupidity that, in their essence, are all too familiar from today's police blotters and court reports but have a raffish charm when seen from our comfortable remove.

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  31. The Doners brought along another scion of another Miami Beach mayor: Mitchell "Micky" Wolfson Jr., a notable connoisseur of the decorative arts and founder and chief donor of the Wolfsonian-Florida International University museum, in the raffish Art Deco district of the island's South Beach.

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  32. She confessed that he was older than she (nearly twice her age, in fact) and from an old service family - the usual decayed Frog nobility by the sound of the name, 'but she wasn't forthcoming at all, and I guessed that the mere thought of the raffish Flashy being presented to dear Charles' parents, as an old acquaintance even, filled her with dismay.

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Tips for Using raffish in a Sentence

You may have an easier time writing sentences with raffish if you know what words are likely to come before or after it, or simply what words are often found in the same sentence.

Frequent Predecessors

Words that often come before raffish in sentences. For example: "a raffish" or "the raffish"

  • a
  • the
  • and
  • more
  • of
  • his
  • slightly
  • rather
  • somewhat
  • its

Frequent Successors

Words that often come after raffish in sentences. For example: "raffish and" or "raffish ."

  • and
  • .
  • charm
  • air
  • young
  • reputation
  • characters
  • look
  • smile
  • grin

Alternate Definitions

    A sentence using raffish