rowdy
Americannoun
-
rowdies
plural
adjective
-
rowdier,
comparative
-
rowdiest
superlative
-
rough and disorderly.
rowdy behavior at school.
-
Slang. great; very enjoyable, often with boisterous fun.
a rowdy time at the arcade with my best friends.
- Synonyms:
- obstreperous, unruly, boisterous
adjective
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of rowdy
An Americanism dating back to 1810–20; perhaps from row 3
Explanation
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.
Vocabulary lists containing rowdy
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
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Schooled
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Frindle
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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:
Mexico players and coaches were disappointed they could not give thousands of fans a win, instead falling 3-2 in a spirited match at rowdy Azteca Stadium.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 6, 2026
Edwards declared she loved Scottish crowds for being rowdy, as fans serenaded her with chants of "no Scotland no party" on the main stage.
From BBC ● Jun. 21, 2026
He spends chapters meditating on trauma and fatherhood, on periods of feeling spiritually adrift, on coming to love a “majestic” faith tradition while remaining connected to the rowdy evangelicals of his childhood.
From Slate ● Jun. 18, 2026
Up next was Haaland, playing before a rowdy audience in Foxborough, Mass., which had charmed the locals with Norway’s row-the-boat celebration.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 17, 2026
A passing taxi driver leaned out of his cab window, alerting them to a group of rowdy white youths massing nearby, which sounded like a lot more fun to them.
From "A Few Red Drops: The Chicago Race Riot of 1919" by Claire Hartfield
Still, the notion that public exposure of their antics will somehow steer these rich young rowdies toward responsibility and respect feels quixotic, given that public exposure is the air they breathe.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 8, 2021
Reid, once a season ticket holder, is not one of the rowdies, and he feels the perception is overblown.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 7, 2021
The other idols of those prelapsarian Mets, the rowdies who won it all in ’86, remain staples of New York media, their successes lionized and their sins reconstrued as locker-room foibles.
From Slate ● Jan. 12, 2020
The happy band of Muppets on "Sesame Street" has faced the sort of hot spotlight you might expect for the rowdies of "Jersey Shore."
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 14, 2012
I gathered up my skirts, pushed through Traft’s rowdies and hurried outside.
From "Hattie Big Sky" by Kirby Larson
But there was far less focus on the even rowdier world of “dating” shows aimed at young men.
From Salon ● Nov. 21, 2025
“There’s all the time in the world to partake in those activities during her rowdier, more up-tempo numbers but during her sacred ballads just shut up and listen,” a third commenter wrote.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 17, 2023
Vance told the crowd, declaring himself “the last thing standing” between them and a rowdier party, “what can you even say after a night like tonight?”
From New York Times ● Nov. 9, 2022
The party will only get rowdier once the playoffs start.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 5, 2022
The gathering was intended as a wholesome alternative to rowdier festivities for the night, and she hoped she could make sure that Henry attended.
From "Out of Darkness" by Ashley Hope Pérez
Nebraska’s arena has become one of the rowdiest barns in the Big Ten.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 8, 2026
Running back Travis Dye, who twice played in Corvallis with Oregon, said he thought that it was “one of the rowdiest crowds Oregon State has ever come with.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 25, 2022
The WestJet Flight Deck, a center field standing room area for the rowdiest fans, was reduced to a maximum of six socially distanced people at a time.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 31, 2021
She parred a hole with a PGA Tour player at the rowdiest hole in golf, shining in the moment instead of shrinking under the pressure.
From Washington Times ● Sep. 20, 2019
Dr. Johnson’s simple question gets to the heart of a basic and uncomfortable fact: some of the rowdiest cries for America’s freedom came from the Founding Fathers, heroes in the American quest for liberty.
From "In the Shadow of Liberty" by Kenneth C. Davis
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.
