roughhouse
Americannoun
verb (used without object)
verb (used with object)
noun
verb
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of roughhouse
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Alex Wolff stars as Tom, a sophomore at a Southern liberal arts school shirking his studies to romp and roughhouse with his fraternity brothers in the fictional Kappa Nu Alpha.
From New York Times ● Jun. 7, 2023
Now here comes Kansas, hurled atop the roughhouse West Region and told to function as best it can.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 15, 2023
The elves roughhouse them down a slide that definitely doesn't appear to be up to code.
From Salon ● Dec. 13, 2022
Mauro Bellugi pestered Brooking in the roughhouse style.
From The Guardian ● Jul. 11, 2021
Finally, she’d found a playmate she could roughhouse with.
From "The Son of Neptune" by Rick Riordan
My elementary school daughter won't wear "pretty" clothes, roughhouses with her dad, likes baby animals, befriends mostly girls and identifies as a girl.
From New York Times ● Nov. 24, 2017
Some days at home he wears dresses, paints his fingernails and plays with dolls; other days, he roughhouses, rams his toys together or pretends to be Spider-Man.
From New York Times ● Aug. 12, 2012
He lives in a sunny, 14-room house with an adjoining tennis court and swimming pool where he roughhouses in off hours with four shiny, beaming sons.
From Time Magazine Archive
We held frequent "roughhouses" there, the younger of us ... to the annoyance of Speedwell.
From Tramping on Life An Autobiographical Narrative by Kemp, Harry
“That day, I was roughhoused and treated unfairly for no reason,” Price testified.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 24, 2022
Morsell’s parents would hear the thuds from the boys crashing into the wall as they roughhoused and tried to dunk.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 18, 2021
That sense of seductive inevitability, which was ever-present in the 1999 Broadway revival with Brian Stokes Mitchell and Marin Mazzie, is roughhoused out of Ellis’ production.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 14, 2019
He joshed and roughhoused with the boys, and seemed to settle immediately into companionship with them in a way that belied the remote gaze he had trained on everyone during the first rehearsal and dinner.
From The New Yorker ● Sep. 20, 2010
When Hal and Jim awoke, the president playfully roughhoused with them.
From "Ambushed!" by Gail Jarrow
The class had developed such a reputation for roughhousing that some officers took to calling it “Fight Club,” Gage said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 19, 2026
The couple already had two kids, Ben and Penny, and envisioned all of the roughhousing, road trips and happy mayhem that comes with four children.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 28, 2023
He recalls research in the 1970s on roughhousing in cockroaches, for example, that would immediately be considered an example of play if puppies were doing it.
From Science Magazine ● Aug. 15, 2023
Besides climbing, the main actions of the dancers remained in the zone of perpetual entanglement: roughhousing, hugging.
From New York Times ● Jun. 19, 2023
I loved roughhousing with my brothers, trying out different moves, and figuring out how to land on my feet.
From "Courage to Soar" by Simone Biles
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
