rorty
English edit
Alternative forms edit
Etymology edit
19th century UK. Unknown etymology. Farmer (1903) categorises the term as costermongers' slang.
Pronunciation edit
Adjective edit
rorty (comparative rortier, superlative rortiest)
- (British, informal) Boisterous, rowdy, saucy, dissipated, or risqué.
- 1898, Robert Smythe Hichens, The Londoners, page 280:
- "Tell us a good story, Rodney — one of your rorty ones." / Mr. Rodney shrivelled. / "I fear," he murmured — "I fear I am scarcely in the — er — rorty vein to-night."
- 1932, Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm:
- But compared with the heavy, muffling darkness of the night in which the countryside was sunk, the lights looked positively rorty
- 2007 May 31, “Lotus 2-Eleven - Road Test First Drive”, in Autocar:
- Any speed any gear it doesn't matter. The 2Eleven's got an enormous powerband huge performance and the rortiest exhaust I've heard in an Elise-based car
- For more quotations using this term, see Citations:rorty.
Derived terms edit
References edit
- John S[tephen] Farmer; W[illiam] E[rnest] Henley, compilers (1903) “rorty”, in Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present. […], volume VI, [London: […] Harrison and Sons] […], →OCLC, page 53.
- “rorty”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.