Word.ws English Dictionary

ruffianly

ruffianly adjective: like or having the qualities of a ruffian.

Adjective

ruffianly (comparative more ruffianly, superlative most ruffianly)

  1. Like or having the qualities of a ruffian.
    • Joseph mumbled indistinctly in the depths of the cellar; but, gave no intimation of ascending; so, his master dived down to him, leaving me vis-à-vis the ruffianly bitch, and a pair of grim, shaggy sheep dogs, who shared with her a jealous guardianship over all my movements.1847 December, Ellis Bell [pseudonym; Emily Brontë], chapter I, in Wuthering Heights: […], volume I, London: Thomas Cautley Newby, […], →OCLC, page 10
    • One righteous man who reverences the Gods
      Shall shipmate be with a ruffianly crew […]1922, “The Seven against Thebes”, in Geoffrey Montagu Cookson, transl., Four Plays of Aeschylus, page 136

Adverb

ruffianly (comparative more ruffianly, superlative most ruffianly)

  1. In the manner of a ruffian.

Forms of ruffianly

Adjective
comparativemore ruffianly
superlativemost ruffianly
Adverb
comparativemore ruffianly
superlativemost ruffianly

Origin of ruffianly

From ruffian + -ly.

Questions about ruffianly

What does ruffianly mean?
Ruffianly means like or having the qualities of a ruffian.
What part of speech is ruffianly?
Ruffianly can be an adjective or an adverb.

Words near ruffianly in the dictionary

  1. ruffianize
  2. ruffianized
  3. ruffianizes
  4. ruffianizing
  5. ruffianlike
  6. ruffianly
  7. ruffiano
  8. ruffianos
  9. ruffianous
  10. ruffians
  11. Ruffieux

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ruffianly (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.

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