Word: raffish
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Percy Hammond, she was "a raffish nightingale"; to Texas Guinan, "just a dumb kid." But when she climbed on top of a grand piano and sang her sultry, brokenhearted ballads, she was torchbearer for an era. When she died in Chicago last week, many a U.S. citizen heaved a nostalgic sigh for the footloose, bibulous speak-easy...
Shanghai is two cities: one a sprawling, sinful Oriental beehive of nearly 3,500,000 Chinese, the other the 60,000 foreigners living along the Whangpoo in the snug, smug plutocracy of the International Settlement and the more raffish French Concession. Since the Japanese took over the Chinese city in 1937, the Settlement has been an island in a sea of intrigue and guerrilla warfare. Round it have prowled gunmen, tough, graft-hungry Japanese soldiers, the gangster bravos and police of the puppet Nanking Government...
...Sodom by the Sea, Newsmen Pilat and Ranson narrate with raffish gusto what they call "an affectionate history" of the "island" (which by filling in its dividing ditch has long since been firmly attached to the mainland). They tell all: the evolution of the amusement parks, side shows, steeplechases, sly games to trap sucker money; the fortunes made and lost by Coney financiers ; the fires that periodically gutted the wooden jungles, during one of which lions ran in the streets with manes on fire; a female exhibitionist who smoked cigars "in a peculiar manner"; a sailor who took his girl...
...stage of a raffish Broadway movie house in Manhattan last week, the antics of a 13-piece orchestra made audiences fidget and giggle. The band was going through all the motions: the swart, longish-haired leader led away; the brasses, the saxophones, the clarinets made a great show of fingering and blowing, but the only sound from the stage was a rhythmic swish-swish from the trap-drummer, a froggy slap-slap from the bull-fiddler, a soft plunk-plunk from the pianist. This, explained Leader Raymond Scott, was silent music...
...Caroline's food during the royal honeymoon. After their separation, the Prince indulged his hatred of Caroline by keeping her from their child, Charlotte. Caroline proceeded to mother every unattached infant she could lay her hands on, adopting one "Willikins" who turned out half-witted. In fits of raffish humor she sometimes hinted that Willikins was hers; though she also said (truthfully, according to Biographer Coxe): "De only time I ever committed adultery was wid de husband of Mrs. Fitzherbert...