raffish
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What is the word of the day and its basic definition?
It's Merriam Webster's word of the day for july twentieth. Today's word is rafish, spelled R-A-F-F-I-S-H. Rafish is an adjective.
How is “raffish” used in a literary example?
It describes people and things that show a careless but usually attractive unconventionality. Here's the word used in a sentence from Harper's magazine. Three or four decades ago, the newspaper man was appealingly rafish, at once a bum who drank too much and a knight errant, who charged unafraid at social injustice, succored the weak, and crossed lances with the powerful and arrogant. Rafish combines the English noun raff with the suffix ish, which in this case means characteristic of.
What are the origins of “raff” and how does it form “raffish”?
When we use the word rafish, we literally means resembling Raf. But what exactly is Raf? You might be more familiar with Raf's synonym, Rifraf, which refers to disreputable people of low social status. Despite the resemblance, these two nouns are distinct in origin. RAF comes directly from the Middle English RAF RAF.
Why did “raffish” develop its modern meaning in the late 1700s?
meaning rubbish, while rifraf descends from the Anglo French rif e Raf, meaning altogether. The similarities between Raf and Riffraf prompted people to start using the two words as synonyms, and Raff gained a rabble sense. It was that ragtag raff that gave rise to the adjective rafish in the late seventeen hundreds. With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski. Visit MarionWebster dot com today for definitions, wordplay, and trending word lookups.
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