rowdy

/ˈraʊdi/

/ˈraʊdi/

Other forms: rowdies; rowdiest; rowdier

If you’re rowdy, you’re loud and raucous. You’re disturbing the peace and somebody’s likely to ask you to quiet down.

When your team wins, if you and your teammates celebrate by running through the streets screaming and wrestling each other on people’s lawns, you’re a rowdy bunch. You may be rough and obnoxious or just rowdy in a good-natured way. But you reserve the name rowdy for a cruel and brutal guy. Remember that bully in the seventh grade who kept taking your lunch money? He was a rowdy.

Definitions of rowdy

1. adjective

   disturbing the public peace; loud and rough
   “rowdy teenagers”

   synonyms: raucous

   disorderly

   undisciplined and unruly
2. noun

   a cruel and brutal fellow
   synonyms: bully, hooligan, roughneck, ruffian, tough, yob, yobbo, yobo

   types:

   bullyboy

   a swaggering tough; usually one acting as an agent of a political faction

   muscle, muscleman

   a bully employed as a thug or bodyguard

   skinhead

   a young person who belongs to a British or American group that shave their heads and gather at rock concerts or engage in white supremacist demonstrations

   plug-ugly, tough guy

   someone who bullies weaker people

   Ted, Teddy boy

   a tough youth of 1950's and 1960's wearing Edwardian style clothes

   type of:

   aggressor, assailant, assaulter, attacker

   someone who attacks