Word.ws English Dictionary

riff-raffy

riff-raffy adjective: synonym of riffraffish.

Adjective

riff-raffy

  1. Synonym of riffraffish.
    • "Not Tunny and I," retorted the lady; "they are noisy, riffraffy, and smell of cowheel and codfish, - uncomfortable to polite minds, disrelishable to respectable society, and dangerous to genteel young ladies.1850, Sylvester Judd, Richard Edney and the Governor's Family, A Rusurban Tale, page 145
    • Brunswick, always thinking ahead, kept improving the tone of bowling alleys, extending credit to potential bowling-alley proprietors, hiring architects and decorators to make sure the places wouldn't look riff-raffy.1962, Elwyn Brooks White (contributor), “The Talk Of The Town”, in The New Yorker, volume 38, page 29
    Synonyms:
    riffraffish

Synonyms of riff-raffy

Origin of riff-raffy

From riffraff + -y. First use appears c. 1850. See cite below.

Questions about riff-raffy

What does riff-raffy mean?
Riff-raffy means synonym of riffraffish.
What part of speech is riff-raffy?
Riff-raffy is an adjective.

Words near riff-raffy in the dictionary

  1. rifer
  2. rifest
  3. riff
  4. riff-raff
  5. riff-raffs
  6. riff-raffy
  7. riffage
  8. riffed
  9. Riffel
  10. Riffels
  11. riffer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: riff-raffy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “riff-raffy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/riff-raffy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.