roguish
adjUK /ˈɹəʊɡɪʃ/ · US /ˈɹoʊɡɪʃ/
Etymology From rogue + -ish.
1
Unprincipled or unscrupulous.
2
Idiomatic Mischievous and playful.
- "She'll be a match for poor little Cupid, with his tiny bow and arrow, I dare say," said Grace Fitzgerald, with a roguish eye.1840, The Novel Newspaper, volume 2, page 8:
- Hortense, with her rich chestnut locks so luxuriantly knotted, plaited, twisted, as if she did not know how to dispose of all their abundance, with her vermillion lips, damask cheek, and roguish laughing eye.a. 1856 (date written), Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], chapter XI, in A[rthur] B[ell] Nicholls, editor, The Professor, a Tale. […], volume I, London: Smith, Elder & Co., […], published 1857, →OCLC, page 187:
1 more example
- Back at the sauna, Mr. Pylhhänen gives a roguish grin and says he has found the answer to the “happiest country” debate – in a very Finnish way, of course.2025 July 30, Mark Sappenfield, “What makes Finland the ‘world’s happiest nation’? In a word, simplicity.”, in The Christian Science Monitor:
- Derived terms
- roguishly, roguishness, unroguish