Pronounced: o-PISS-thuh-graf, noun
Notes: I didn’t know this word, but I really like it and hope I get to use it soon!
Yesterday’s word
The word raffish means
- marked by or suggestive of flashy vulgarity or crudeness
- marked by a careless unconventionality
First usage
Our word came into English in either the very late 1700s or very early 1800s
Background / Comments
Originally, the reference material for our word included the synonym “rakish” for the second definition, but after doing additional research, I believe that to have been a mistake – possible a printing error; it would fit with the first definition, but not the second. I guessed that our word came from “rakish”; possibly from someone who could not pronounce the ‘k’ sound very well. My guess was wrong: our word came from the word raff, which is a shortening of riffraff (a group of people regarded as disreputable or worthless), which came from the Middle English rif and raf (every particle; things of small value), which came from the Old French expression rif et raf, which came from rifler (to spoil).
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 