rorty

English

Alternative forms

• raughty

Etymology

19th century UK. Unknown etymology. Farmer (1903) categorises the term as costermongers' slang.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈɹɔːti/
• Rhymes: -ɔːti

Adjective

rorty (comparative rortier, superlative rortiest)

1. (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

• rortiness, rorty bloke, rorty dasher, rorty toff

References

• 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.

Anagrams

• Torry