| English Dictionary |
ROGUISH
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Dictionary entry overview: What does roguish mean?
• ROGUISH (adjective)
The adjective ROGUISH has 2 senses:
1. playful in an appealingly bold way
2. lacking principles or scruples
Familiarity information: ROGUISH used as an adjective is rare.
Dictionary entry details
Sense 1
Meaning:
Playful in an appealingly bold way
Synonyms:
Context example:
a roguish grin
Similar:
playful (full of fun and high spirits)
Derivation:
roguishness (the trait of indulging in disreputable pranks)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Lacking principles or scruples
Synonyms:
blackguardly; rascally; roguish; scoundrelly
Context example:
the captain was set adrift by his roguish crew
Similar:
dishonest; dishonorable (deceptive or fraudulent; disposed to cheat or defraud or deceive)
Derivation:
roguishness (reckless or malicious behavior that causes discomfort or annoyance in others)
Context examples
So they came back and whispered softly to him, saying, “Now let us have no more of your roguish jokes; but throw us out some of the money.”
(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)
He writes in a different way entirely, telling me that he never sent any love letter at all, and is very sorry that my roguish sister, Jo, should take liberties with our names.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
Again he stretched his hand out to the romance, and again came that roguish burst of merriment.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I was still looking at the doorway, thinking that Miss Mowcher was a long while making her appearance, when, to my infinite astonishment, there came waddling round a sofa which stood between me and it, a pursy dwarf, of about forty or forty-five, with a very large head and face, a pair of roguish grey eyes, and such extremely little arms, that, to enable herself to lay a finger archly against her snub nose, as she ogled Steerforth, she was obliged to meet the finger half-way, and lay her nose against it.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
“Why shrink, my honey-bird? Why so afeard, my sweet cinnamon?” exclaimed the other, a loose-jointed lanky youth with a dancing, roguish eye.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
| Learn English with... Proverbs |
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." (Maimonides)
"Three people can make up a tiger." (Chinese proverb)
"Have no respect at table and in bed." (Corsican proverb)