Word: riffraff
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...Joyful Condemned, by Kylie Tennant. A novel about Sydney riffraff; light-hearted naturalism, Australian style (TIME...
...McGartys were Australian riffraff -and well content to be, so long as nobody tried to reform them. Hector ran the "Sword of Fortune," a pub near Sydney's waterfront, where blood flowed almost as freely as beer. Grandma lived near by, pretending to be deaf yet privy to every racket within miles. Wilma had eight children, none legitimate. Fred, during a turn at the reform school, ate a tin of nails to spite the superintendent. Clarrie was a con man and the family intellectual: "It's a sort of poetry," he said, "to read over the names...
Outwardly, little Madeleine's life was a succession of sleazy flats in the slummier parts of Paris, poor food, illness, and an environment in which bawds and criminal riffraff were taken for granted. Her father died a pauper, and for several days, while her mother tried to raise money for a funeral, the body lay in their tiny, one-room-and-kitchen flat. Madeleine's mother wor ried about the effect on the child, but a worldly neighbor snapped: "Let her be! . . . Hide nothing from your little Madeleine, and if later her luck changes, she'll know...
...genre. Burt Lancaster, the devil-may-care sergeant, recruits nine rough, tough men from the Legion's brig (Gilbert Roland, Kieron Moore, George Tobias et al.) for a dangerous mission. The regiment is away from the fort; Riff tribes are uniting to attack. Lancaster's outnumbered riffraff must hold off the Riffs until reinforcements arrive...
...persons in or out of the Government not to be "buffaloed into giving up" if they find themselves targets of "smear attacks" on their loyalty. "Get a good lawyer and fight. That is the only way we are going to stop these nonsensical excesses." But even the bouts with "riffraff in Congress," he added, have their compensations. "When you are subject to a public attack, as I was, people rally around you, and you find you have friends you never knew about...