noun
verb
definition
To play the ruffian; to rage; to raise tumult.
adjective
definition
Brutal; cruel; savagely boisterous; murderous.
example
ruffian rage
Examples of ruffian in a Sentence
He was not a ruffian or a tyrant like his father, and had indeed not a few of the domestic virtues.
From his eye, he saw a third ruffian hurtle backward into the bushes.
They were subduing, for want of a better word, some dangerous ruffian.
In 1541 he lost two infant sons, and the mysterious affair of the death of that aesthetic ruffian, Sir James Hamilton of Finnart, was supposed to lie heavy on his mind.
Macpherson is said to have sent Johnson a challenge, to which Johnson replied that he was not to be deterred from detecting what he thought a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian.
With this Douglas, Knight of Liddesdale, a ruffian and a traitor, may be said to begin the long struggle between his too powerful house and the crown.
While negotiations were still pending, he had been set upon one evening by a fanatical ruffian, who thought to expedite matters with the dagger.
There is no reason to doubt his sincerity, but he was coarse and intemperate - Froude roundly calls him a foul-mouthed ruffian - without the wisdom of the serpent or the harmlessness of the dove.
All men of political influence were either in open opposition or, when they belonged to the Conservative parties, were holding aloof in disgust at the predominance of the queens favorites, Gonzales Brabo, a mere ruffian, and Marion, her steward, whose position in the palace was perfectly well known.
The landlady tells Deborah off for sitting " on the garden " while ignoring the local ruffian rolling a joint by the front door.
But he failed to perceive that such a ruffian as Micheletto could not inspire the troops of Florence with that devotion to their country and that healthy moral tone which should distinguish a patriot army.
That the coarse and imperious nature of the hardy and able ruffian who had now become openly her master should no less openly have shown itself even in the first moments of their inauspicious union is what any bystander of common insight must inevitably have foreseen.
Davila was murdered, while on his way to take possession of the government of Cremona for Venice in July 1631, by a ruffian, with whom some dispute seems to have arisen concerning the furnishing of the relays of horses ordered for his use by the Venetian government.