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Rowdy   Listen
noun
Rowdy  n.  (pl. rowdies)  One who engages in rows, or noisy quarrels; a ruffianly fellow.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rowdy" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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 and ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable

... warning he turned contemptuously and passed out, leaving the discomfited rowdy to settle accounts with his friends. But there was a low note in the ruffian's voice, an insinuating inflection, which stayed with him all along the way home, like a bad taste in the mouth. He saw by the aid of a ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland

... York Sewer! Here's this morning's New York Stabber! Here's the New York Family Spy! Here's the New York Private Listener! Here's the New York Peeper! Here's the New York Plunderer! Here's the New York Keyhole Reporter! Here's the New York Rowdy Journal! Here's all the New York papers! Here's full particulars of the patriotic Locofoco movement yesterday, in which the Whigs were so chawed up; and the last Alabama gouging case; and the interesting Arizona ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice

... the step flowed naturally from the fears of the king and the nearness of the feast, the tapu was early that morning re-enforced; not a day too soon, from the manner the boats began to arrive thickly, and the town was filled with the big rowdy vassals of Karaiti. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... this class of traffic can be almost entirely abolished. Prior to September 15th, 1908, this city had what is commonly known as a "red-light district" covering an area of about three square blocks. In this district the rowdy and tough element naturally congregated, and it was an every day occurrence to see drunken brawls, cutting and shooting scraps, and suicides; everything, in fact, that would be disgusting and annoying to the sober-minded citizen. It was an every night occurrence for ambulance calls to come ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various

... Blackbird did an ungentlemanly thing. He winked at Jolly Robin's wife. But he was a rowdy. So what ...
— The Tale of Grandfather Mole • Arthur Scott Bailey

... it reached 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 to make use of so excellent a weapon against a man, who, though ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... to a type which he could not ask his daughter to meet; that he used to go out motoring, driving himself, after other people were in bed; and that strange scenes had taken place at Riversbrook. Flack had told his wife on several occasions that he had heard sounds of wild laughter and rowdy singing coming from Riversbrook as he passed along the street on his beat in the small hours of the morning. Several times in the early dawn Flack had seen two or three ladies in evening dress ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson

... would have resented being placed in the same category as this rowdy, for whom, he recalled, the police were searching. But here he felt no indignation. On the contrary, he was pleasantly surprised, as if by an unexpected meeting with a ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... sort of clothes she used to wear. Her 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, have been ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell

... a box at the Palace Grand. The place is packed with rowdy men and ribald women. I am at the zenith of my shame. Right and left I am buying wine. Like vultures at a feast they bunch into the box. Like carrion flies they buzz around me. That is what I feel myself ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... 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 been a ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs

... 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 ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton

... roads, stained with the blood of ambuscades, bales of silks from Valencia, travelling gangs of Moorish artisans, heavy armed Templars on their way to the Sepulchre, wandering minstrels, sneakthieves, bawds, rowdy strings of knights and foot-soldiers setting out with wine-skins at their saddlebows to cross the passes towards the debatable lands of Extremadura, where there were infidels to kill and cattle to drive off and village girls to rape, all when the gate was as new and crisply cut out of clean ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos

... distorted, nor that his words wounded him deeply. They had come to the Brandenburger Thor, and were walking over the Pariser Platz. Under the lindens they were surrounded at once by noise and bustle. The streets were full of rowdy bands of men who sang and shouted all together, now pushing one another in violent rudeness, now shouting "Health to the New Year," here knocking off an angry Philistine's hat, there surrounding and embracing some honest man who was wearily making his way homeward; insulting ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... thick outline and snub features are generally supposed to be the vulgar attributes of our lower classes; but the predominance of spirit over matter vindicates itself strikingly across the Atlantic, where, in the lowest strata of society, the native American rowdy, with a face as pure in outline as an ancient Greek coin, and hands and feet as fine as those of a Norman noble, strikes one dumb with the aspect of a countenance whose vile, ignoble hardness can triumph over such refinement of line and delicacy of proportion. A human soul has a wonderful supremacy ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... undesired favour he affected not to see. He noted, too, that when Cossie accompanied him to the same little gate, Delia and Sandy lingered behind with alarming significance. He began to hate Cossie and to revolt against the slap-dash untidy menage, Delia and her train of rowdy boys, the shouting, the practical jokes, and the slang. Then suddenly the Levison cloud burst! One night, when he was flying upstairs to his sky parlour, his mother waylaid him on the landing and, with an imperative gesture, beckoned him into ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... and feminine, sounded in the distance. She caught a shrill, rowdy laugh. "The cutting-women and their men," she thought dimly. That social phenomenon of the picking season, grown accustomed by six years of passing summers and winters, drew no special attention from her. But ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin

... asked to sing, and when she had taken another sip of milk she said she would give them an old song with variations. It was called Moll Rowdy, and the accompaniment was by Spitz, and everybody said that there never was anything more striking. Then Miss Tabitha, who had a very fine ear, gave them a little French song which had a chorus of Tant Mieux, and they all joined in, Captain Black and Mr. Velvet Purr singing the bass. Then ...
— A Apple Pie and Other Nursery Tales • Unknown

... mistress Brookes, "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 o' folk, thoucht ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald

... little girlhood had always been a picture of what a hero must be. She used to dream big things about him when she was a child. He had been the best baseball player in school when he was ten, and the handsomest little rowdy in town, as well as the boldest, bravest champion ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill

... 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 think what your mothers'll feel, now that you've ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... are familiar with the changes that take place at puberty. We laugh at the girl who, throwing off her tom-boy ways, suddenly wants her skirts let down and her hair done up. We laugh at the boy who suddenly leaves off being a rowdy, and turns into a would-be dandy. We scold because this same boy and girl who have always been so "sweet and tractable" become, almost overnight, surly and cantankerous, restive under authority and impatient ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... and certain matters of the past, I was troubled in spirit. But I couldn't see why my son shouldn't have an animal to love. And I have had Hilton fix a little box in one corner of the garage for Dinkie's new pet, which he has christened Rowdy. ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer

... answered readily enough. He lived far away in Islington, in a small house down a shabby street, littered with straw and dirty paper, where out of school hours a troop of assorted children ran and squabbled with a shrill, joyless, rowdy clamour. His single back room, remarkable for having an extremely large cupboard, he rented furnished from two elderly spinsters, dressmakers in a humble way with a clientele of servant girls mostly. He had a heavy padlock put on the cupboard, but otherwise he was ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

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

... 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, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various

... her—the words coming through a slit at the corner of his rowdy mouth, "Sit still, or I'll run ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis

... always gave her husband three moves before she spoke. "Yes! yes! you'd make that boy a regular little rowdy if you had your way, ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White

... and Holy Ghost; so that many Atheists are 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 to find in it. How can a man of Dean Stanley's ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote

... weapons were incessant. Rude dance halls and saloons were crowded with truculent, armed men in search of trouble. Churches and schools were unknown. Tents, log cabins, and brush shanties made the residences. "Hacks rattled to and fro between the several towns, freighted with drunken and rowdy humanity of both sexes. Citizens of acknowledged respectability often walked, more often perhaps rode side by side on horseback, with noted courtesans, in open day, through the crowded streets, and seemingly suffered no harm in reputation. Pistols flashed, bowie-knives flourished, oaths filled ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough

... health seemed not in the least to suffer from an excess and a recklessness which would have killed any other man. He ate enough for four, drank until he dropped, passed whole nights out of doors in icy rain, was knocked down and stunned in brawls, and would get up again next day, with his rowdy gaiety, wanting everybody about him ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... to handle it?" she shrieked, as the Rowdy Cart bit its way through a stone fence and began to dance a two-step ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart

... 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 ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various

... that his trouble had begun the evening before. When he had come home yesterday evening, a little drunk as usual, and from long-established habit had begun swearing and shaking his fists, his old woman had looked at her rowdy spouse as she had never looked at him before. Usually, the expression in her aged eyes was that of a martyr, meek like that of a dog frequently beaten and badly fed; this time she had looked at him sternly and immovably, ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... strike you, prince?" asked Gania, suddenly. "Did he seem to be a serious sort of a man, or just a common rowdy fellow? What was your own opinion ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... her table, with a quaint shrug towards the corridor] It is not rowdy here, Madame, as a rule—not as in some places. To-night a little noise. Madame is fond of flowers? [He whisks out, and returns almost at once with a bowl of carnations from some table in the next room] These ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... 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 together in a common bondage? It was not the fear ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes

... all smoking, and suddenly the Dean became aware that he too had a lighted cigar in his mouth, and was puffing at it. At the same moment he discovered that he was wearing a disgracefully battered college-cap, and a brilliant "blazer," lately invented by a rowdy set as the badge of their dining Club. He shuddered, but it was useless. He put his hand in his coat-pocket. It contained a bottle ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 27, 1890 • Various

... 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 ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... "The Rowdy" was enough to provoke laughter even on the Sabbath and under Aunt Margaret's nose. He was the robin whose chief shouting-place was the hawthorn bush in the lane. John and Elizabeth had so named him because he always made such a noise, leaping about and calling "Hi, ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... you come to know these parties, sir," he put in English. But without awaiting an answer he continued: "Benoit is crazy to marry his daughter to that rowdy. Benoit was always rather off on the surface, but he has usually been shrewder at bottom. Cuiller infatuates him. He hasn't a single antecedent, but has been treating Benoit so much to liquor and boasting, that the foolish man follows him like ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair

... island, the 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 Bowery is generally regarded as one of the ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... Say, did yuh ever hear uh old Eagle Creek Smith, of the Cross L, or Rowdy Vaughan, or a fellow up on Milk River they ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower

... Potiphar, I am not going to open my house for a crowd of people who don't go away till daylight; who spoil my books and furniture; involve me in a foolish expense; for a gang of rowdy boys, who drink my Margaux, and Lafitte, and Marcobrunner, (what kind of drinks are those, dear Caroline?) and who don't know Chambertin from liquorice-water,—for a swarm of persons few of whom we know fewer, still care for me, ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis

... anything but toast water until I see him again. You're a good nurse; you'll get him out." Dr. Archie smiled encouragingly. He glanced about the little garden and wrinkled his brows. "I can't see what makes him behave so. He's killing himself, and he's not a rowdy sort of fellow. Can't you tie him up someway? Can't you tell when these fits are ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... them; she had heard her mother speak of them. One or two of them were negro songs, such as very pretty young ladies used to sing without harm to themselves or offence to others; but Imogene decided that they were rather rowdy. "Dear me, Mrs. Bowen! Did you sing such songs? You ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells

... this season, is a rowdy place in summer; not rowdy, however, after the fashion of Margate. There is a suggestive difference between the two. The upper classes in both towns are of course irreproachable in externals—it is their uniformity of behaviour throughout the world which makes them so uninteresting ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... cheap trip to Folkestone. I spent sevenpence on dropping pennies into silly automatic machines and peepshows of rowdy girls having a jolly time. I spent a penny on the lift and fourpence on refreshments. That cleaned me out. The rest of the time I was so miserable that I was glad to get back to the ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw

... for us, after his conversion, as terrible blackguards. No doubt he is too severe. Those young men were neither better nor worse than elsewhere. They were rowdy, as they were in the other cities of the Empire, and as one always is at that age. Imperial regulations enjoined the police to have an eye on the students, to note their conduct and what company they kept. They were not to ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... I 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 ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various

... gang had suddenly appeared from the alleyway, and forming a circle, surrounded them. There was an addition to their ranks. Ralph noted this instantly. He was a rowdy-looking chunk of a fellow, and the swing of his body, the look on his face and the expression in his eyes showed that he delighted in thinking himself a "tough customer." Backed by his comrades, who looked vicious ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman

... and conditions. Quiet people who read and work all day; rowdy people who never seem happy unless they are throwing cushions or pulling one another downstairs by the feet; painfully enterprising people who get up sports, sweeps, concerts, and dances, and are full of a tiresome, misplaced energy; bridge-loving people who play from morning till night; ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas

... Christian duffer," cried Rupert, in a sort of rapture, "I don't wonder you couldn't be a judge. You think every one as good as yourself. Isn't the thing plain enough now? A doubtful acquaintance; rowdy stories, a most suspicious conversation, mean streets, a concealed knife, a man nearly killed, and, finally, a false address. That's ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton

... that blew and though I've never been timid, I was shaking like a sheet of paper. It was a minute or two before I could get it out of my mind that some one had been cut from ear to ear. Then I remembered that they had told me that rowdy parties were often boating on the water above the first dam, as the weather grew warmer, and when I listened and heard no sound of any one else in the house stirring, I began to think that my half-sleepy ears had exaggerated the sounds. And then, just as I was about to close the window, a cloud ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child

... remember seemed, however, to be curiously deficient in the necessary qualities for this part of his duty. He was a mild and sleepy little man, and, unfortunately, he had to preside over an exceptionally rowdy audience at a small hall in the South-East district. On the night that I was present, there occurred a great disturbance. "Joss Jessop, the Monarch of Mirth," a gentleman evidently high in local request was, for some reason or other, not forthcoming, and in his place the management proposed ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome

... of the old Washington Square stock, as antique—and as honourable—as Methuselah. Undine soon tires of him; above all, tires of his family and their old-fashioned social code. For her the rowdy joys of Peter Van Degen and his set. The Odyssey of Undine is set forth for us by an accomplished artist in prose. We see her in Italy, blind to its natural beauties, blind to its art, unhappy till she ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... satellites in one corner of the girls' own special sitting-room, and Maggie was in a similar position at the farther end. Aneta's satellites were always quiet, sober, and well-behaved; Maggie's, it is sad to relate, were a trifle rowdy. There is something else also painful to relate—namely, that Merry Cardew cast longing eyes from time to time in the direction of that portion of the room where Maggie and her ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade

... "Along with those rowdy miners?" growled the squire. "I see enough of them on the Bench. Green of course is cracked on that subject. He'd like to set the world in ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell

... dreading 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 ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... 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 ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd

... group of boys in the distance. Hailing them in a rowdy style, common to boys of his stamp all over the world, weather in Africa, Japan, Amsterdam, or Paris, he scampered toward them, forgetting coachman, gingerbread, everything ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge

... outright. "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 about him." ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather

... level, supplied the needs of 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 ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell

... corner of Paris. It does look as if he might slip that slender rapier through your body in a second, and pull it out and wipe it, and not move a muscle; but I don't think he would do it unless he were directly ordered to. He would not be likely to knock you down and drag you out, in mistake for the rowdy who was assaulting you. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... another of these portly inhabitants of the deep came rolling along with a rowdy, swaggering gait, close to the surface of the water. The mate, cool and collected, took a careful aim, and again threw the iron, which entered his victim, and then shouted with the voice of a Stentor, "Haul in! Haul in!" And we did haul in; but the fish was ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... world. The date of the address had been fixed, the 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 do so. But as I sat ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... display, so Alma, the cook, and William, the man, assured me—per Derry. All the sadder its fate; for alas! a gang of rowdy boys fell upon Harry, and while he was busy fighting half of them—he is as plucky as his uncle, the general—the other half looted the beautiful stock in trade! They would have despoiled our poor little merchant entirely but for the opportune arrival ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet

... shouldered the domestic responsibilities. Their menu du diner to us was a marvel of gorgeous delicacies. After the toasts and speeches came a musical and dramatic programme, punctuated by choice gramophone records and rowdy student choruses. The washing-up was completed by all hands at midnight. Outside, the wind was not to be outdone; it surpassed itself with an unusual burst of ninety-five ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... straw. In the early light the Regiment moved away from the pleasant camp of Awapuni, the first of many such abodes. In the middle of the morning, struggling engines creaked away with the long lines of horse-trucks and carriages of rowdy troopers who cheered wildly as they set out at last upon their adventures. They crawled along the low country of the Manawatu, then along the rough cliffs above the sea, over the hills, and at length down the rocky gorge to Wellington. The ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... says 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

... Pina, never were people more in earnest in this 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 ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne

... died, the grand-jury should indict, that Judge Norton would try the murderer, and the whole proceeding should be as speedy as decency would allow. Then Coleman said "the people had no confidence in Scannell, the sheriff," who was, he said, in collusion with the rowdy element of San Francisco. Johnson then offered to be personally responsible that Casey should be safely guarded, and should be forthcoming for trial and execution at the proper time. I remember very well Johnson's assertion that he had no right to make these stipulations, and maybe no power to ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... of the group from which the drunken rowdy had come sprang from the benches. They jumped over the ropes, crowding into the ring ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness

... of these sad Affairs, at which the Rummies had balled up the whole Menu, Claudine came to the front with an Ultimatum. She said she was going to can the awful Birthplace and spend the remainder of her Natural among the real Rowdy-Dows. ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... Sally Simple, and this afternoon they surpassed themselves. As Peggy's guests sat in that blissful state of mind and body resulting from being "serenely full, the epicure would say," they were startled by an altogether rowdy, abandoned "Moo-oo-oo-oo," echoed in a higher key, and over the lawn came two as disreputable-looking animals as one could picture, for Betsy Brindle and her daughter, a pretty little year-old heifer, were unquestionably, undeniably, hopelessly intoxicated. Betsy was swaying and staggering ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... smash in the regions either of the teeth, or of the ribs—both, if possible, preferred—was supposed to improve the transaction so much, that, what with the tooth dropping, or the rib cracking, or both, as aforesaid, it was considered 'settled.' Thus originated the special title of 'rowdy mob,' or Tipperary, in reference to the Irish. Let us have the ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello

... this phrase contains both a fairy tale and a philosophy; it really states almost the whole truth about those pure outbreaks of pagan enjoyment to which all healthy men have often been tempted. It expresses the desire to have levity on a large scale which is the essence of such a mood. The rowdy young man is not content to paint his tutor's door green: he would like to paint the whole city scarlet. The word which to us best recalls such gigantesque idiocy is the word "mafficking." The slaves of that saturnalia were not ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton

... "You must note 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 ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie

... bully him over the mere stealing of a woman. So the limp and sea-sick Vaega was carried up out of the sweating foc'sle and given a cabin berth, and Allan planked down two twenty-dollar pieces for her passage to the Union Group. When she got better she sang rowdy songs, and laughed all day, and made fun of the holy Sisters. And one day Allan beat her with a deal board because she sat down on a band-box in the trade-room and ruined a hat belonging to a swell official's wife in Apia. And she liked him all the ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke

... never thus far been able to coax into a row with him had arrived on the spot. He must have judged that this was a piece of double luck, in that he might take revenge upon the one who had interfered with his pleasure, and at the same time force Hugh Morgan, who had never been known to engage in any rowdy practices, to enter into ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson

... explanation like that. Come now, Kettle, be sensible: put yourself in the authorities' place. They've got a town to administer—a big town—that not thirty years ago was the most murderous, fanatical, rowdy dwelling of slave-traders on the West Coast of Africa. To-day, by dint of careful shepherding, they've reduced it to a city of quiet respectability, with a smaller crime rate than Birmingham; and in fact made it into a model town ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... 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

... 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, you bum,—do ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... follow him home and whip him in his own house. Now, clear out, and tell the rest of your rowdy crew that I'll shoot the first one of you that disturbs me again. I'll send the constable for you, and maybe for ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe

... Woman lived, and the Guess Gate; likewise those two communities known as the Doves and the Hawking Sopers, whose ways of life were as opposite as the Poles. The Doves were simple men, and religious; but the Hawking Sopers were indeed a wild and rowdy crew, and it is said that the King's father had hunted and drunk with them until his estates were gambled away and his affairs decayed of neglect, and nothing was left at last but the solitary Barn which marked the northern boundary of his possessions. ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon

... imagine the sensations of Lawrence Barrett or Louis James could they behold Sylvester Montague, whom both these gentlemen had proclaimed to be no mean artist, enacting the role of a bar-room rowdy five days on end by reclining upon a sawdust floor with his back supported by a spirits barrel. The supposititious comments of the two placed upon the motion-picture industry the black guilt of having ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson

... last March, after I'd come back from the other side, I happened into a little theatre on Broadway where a burlesque was running. It's a rowdy little place—a music hall—but nice people go there because, though it's stuffy, it's ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... Francisco, 1862. 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 ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... said, was of action, To crush out instanter the traitorous faction. In the press, and the mess, They would hear nothing less Than to make the advance, spite of rhyme or of reason, And at once put an end to the insolent treason. There was Greeley, And Ely, The bloodthirsty Grow, And Hickman (the rowdy, not Hickman the beau), And that terrible Baker Who would seize on the South, every acre, And Webb, who would drive us all into the Gulf, or Some nameless locality smelling of sulphur; And with all this bold crew Nothing would do, ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... played. Brigit watched him, amazed. Where was the rowdy, loud-voiced, amusing and almost ridiculously boyish middle-aged man with whom she had come ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten

... it. On the staircase can be seen the identical spot where the dog basket belonging to the aged pug dog of the eighteenth Countess of Forres was nightly placed, to the intense discomfiture of those ill-behaved and rowdy guests who turned the hours of sleep into a time for revolting debauches with soda water syphons and flour. In fact it is commonly thought that the end of the above-mentioned aged pug dog was hastened by the excitable Lord Frederick de Vere Thomson hurling it, in mistake ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile

... predatory enemy which it sees. To Europeans the smooth-featured, slender, low-statured Japanese seemed like boys; and 'boy' is the term by which the native attendant of a Yokohama merchant is still called. To Japanese the first red-haired, rowdy, drunken European sailors seemed fiends, shojo, demons of the sea; and by the Chinese the Occidentals are still called 'foreign devils.' The great stature and massive strength and fierce gait of foreigners in Japan enhanced the strange impression created by their faces. Children cried ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... before last. A piece of the rope was still hanging from the tree. When I got back to the 'hotel' - a place not much better than the shed at Yuba Forks - I found a newspaper with an account of the affair. Drawing a chair up to the stove, I was deep in the story, when a huge rowdy-looking fellow in ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... the Mum don't say that's first-rate, I'm a Dutchman! You see, I don't write very close, so that this respectably fills up three sides of a sheet of note-paper. Oh, here's something over the leaf. 'P.S. I hope Stump and Rowdy have got something for me, because I want some tin very bad.' That's all! Well, Giglamps! don't you call that quite a model letter for a University man to send to ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... all want. But every one isn't gifted with the same amount of business acumen. A few will always find their way to the top. Now, I consider that you are showing a spirit of humility in coming to me to beg a position in my employ. Probably you regret that you have in the past been such a rowdy, and will endeavor to change your ways once you come under my jurisdiction. We have a reputation to sustain in this establishment, young man. You would have to try and be a gentleman here. Take a lesson from my son, who so nobly forgave your ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster

... heart quivered just a bit, if memory went back to his home kennel and to the rowdy throng of brothers and sisters and, most of all, to the soft furry mother against whose side he had nestled every night since he was born. But if so, Lad was too valiant to show homesickness by so much ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton

... persons one word seems about as good as another, Sunday or Sabbath, but when there are young people about the house you learn to be careful how you talk before them. Now, I would not go so far as to say that "Sunday" is what you might call exactly rowdy, but er... but... er... Let me illustrate. If a man says, "It's a beautiful Sunday morning," like enough he has on red-and-green stockings, baggy knickerbockers, a violet-and-purple sweater, a cap shaped like ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... society. That at the Museum or great University Club was patronised by the elite of nobility and the professors and their families. Then came the Harmonie—respectable, but not aristocratic. Then another in a hotel, which was rather more rowdy than reputable; not really outrageous, yet where the gentlemen students "whooped it up" in grand style with congenial grisettes; and, finally, there was a fancy ball at the Waldhorn, or some such place, or several of them, over the river, where peasants and students with maids to match could waltz ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... so still and deserted, save for the buzzing of hornets around the rich blossoms in the heavy sunshine, has thus become a very rowdy spot, resounding with the noisy quarrels of the gipsies and the shrill cries of the urchins of the suburb. In one corner there is a primitive saw-mill for cutting the timber, the noise from which serves as a dull, continuous bass accompaniment to the sharp voices. The wood is placed on two ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... Sloggins, when he reached man's 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 ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang

... up, we abandoned a further attempt that night. As our little, bannerless procession filed slowly back to headquarters, hoodlums followed us. The police of course gave us no protection and just as we were entering the door of our own building a rowdy struck me on the side of the head with a heavy banner pole. The blow knocked me senseless against the stone building; my hat was snatched from my head, and burned in the street. We entered the building to find that soldiers and sailors had been ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens

... the padre while they kept one eye open for the advent of the rowdy cow-punchers, who always wanted to drink, and then to fight with some one, either with fists or pistols. Why should any one fight with them, especially ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford

... welcome to drink and meat, A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfullest, A novice beginning yet experient of myriads of seasons, Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion, A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker, Prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest. ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... showing more or less Stage Fright, as they were not accustomed to seeing Rugs and Tidies. They told him that he had a Swell Joint. After they had been to the Tea a couple of times they began to peel and one of them started some rowdy Work on the Piano. Another backed into a $30 Statuette and put it out of Business and then offered to pay for it, but the Host said it cost only 98 cents at ...
— People You Know • George Ade

... proposed the duke's health; but that had to wait till new glasses were brought in and filled. Altogether, then, instead of being a solemn, dignified affair, such as one might have expected, it was a tremendously jolly dinner—a little rowdy, perhaps, but delightfully friendly. If I had entered the dining room as Old Tom Middleton's daughter, "who actually used to live over a livery stable, my dear," it was not so I left it; for the nimbus of the sacred name of Porter had already begun to shed its beautiful ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field

... minister, and what a contrast! He thought I wanted the church for to-night and said: "We have our prayer-meeting, but will adjourn it for you." This kindness made me so weak, the tears came in spite of me, and I explained the rowdy treatment of the other minister. I have had a varied experience ever since I left Easton. Verily, I am embarked in an unpopular cause and must be content ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper



Words linked to "Rowdy" :   skinhead, tough guy, ruffian, raucous, yobo, yob, bullyboy, attacker, plug-ugly, tough, assaulter, aggressor, assailant, yobbo, muscle, rowdiness, roughneck, bully



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