What's the difference between blackguard and scoundrel?

Blackguard


Definition:

  • (n.) The scullions and lower menials of a court, or of a nobleman's household, who, in a removal from one residence to another, had charge of the kitchen utensils, and being smutted by them, were jocularly called the "black guard"; also, the servants and hangers-on of an army.
  • (n.) The criminals and vagrants or vagabonds of a town or community, collectively.
  • (n.) A person of stained or low character, esp. one who uses scurrilous language, or treats others with foul abuse; a scoundrel; a rough.
  • (n.) A vagrant; a bootblack; a gamin.
  • (v. t.) To revile or abuse in scurrilous language.
  • (a.) Scurrilous; abusive; low; worthless; vicious; as, blackguard language.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Here he is on the Nasty Party in 1835, in a letter to Catherine Hogarth (soon to take the name Dickens, as his wife): "... a ruthless set of bloody-minded villains... perfect savage... superlative blackguards..." Two days later he ended another letter: "P.S.

Scoundrel


Definition:

  • (n.) A mean, worthless fellow; a rascal; a villain; a man without honor or virtue.
  • (a.) Low; base; mean; unprincipled.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Cutts-McKay said he regretted ever agreeing to work at Al-Madinah, saying of the trust and governors: "The worst mistake I ever made was getting involved with that shower of scoundrels."
  • (2) Boris Johnson has always struck me as an enigma wrapped inside a whoopee cushion Yes, those of us who woke up on Friday 24 June to discover that far from being patriots, under the new dispensation we were very likely to be regarded as not simply scoundrels but quite possibly traitors.
  • (3) Han definitely shoots first (and asks questions later) Lucas and fans have debated for decades whether the sardonic space scoundrel was originally intended to shoot bounty hunter Greedo only after the alien fired his blaster first in the Mos Eisley Cantina in 1977’s saga opener A New Hope, but Abrams clearly has no such qualms about showing the elder Solo as a quick-on-the-draw kind of guy.
  • (4) He lambasted those at the top of Kremlin power as “thieves, scoundrels and traitors who must be destroyed”.
  • (5) A younger version of Solo will instead return in a new spin-off , tipped to appear in 2018, with Dave Franco, Logan Lerman and Scott Eastwood reportedly among the frontrunners to play the sardonic space scoundrel.
  • (6) He had a totally persuasive interview style which led to the unmasking of a scoundrel."
  • (7) In the immediate postwar period, he was the handsome scoundrel in Giuseppe De Santis's neo-realist melodrama Bitter Rice (1948), in which he was first seen on international screens.
  • (8) Tom Riddles Heckmondwike, West Yorkshire • Stuart Rose perhaps needs to be reminded of Samuel Johnson’s remark: “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Tim Gossling Cambridge
  • (9) The general public may not share Hislop's tendency to quirky nostalgia, but they certainly think that today's politicians are scoundrels.
  • (10) He is a very bad man (if you like, or if you don't like), but he may be the purest-spoken scoundrel in all the movies.
  • (11) They say that patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels and we are seeing that truism yet again with the government,” Shorten said.
  • (12) However, that script was reversed on Wednesday as Fiorina repeatedly referenced God, the constitution and the founding fathers while Cruz bashed Trump as “a no-good scoundrel” and “a big government New York liberal, who is a Washington insider, who agrees with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama”.
  • (13) It is better to be safe than sorry, or, as my mother was fond of saying, "I don't have a grammar school education but I can spot one scoundrel".
  • (14) Patriotism is indeed the last recourse to which a scoundrel clings.
  • (15) Did we believe Boris Johnson to be a scoundrel, or someone whose ruling passion was the love of his country?
  • (16) The person causing much of that bleeding is Sterling Archer himself, a figure informed not only by secret agents such as Bond and Matt Helm, but also by George MacDonald Fraser's literary soldier-scoundrel Flashman (who Reed reckons makes Archer "seem like a social worker").
  • (17) On idle scoundrel parasites – 2005 Asked how he rated the role of professional TV pundits, Mourinho told the Sunday Express: “The best job in the world is to be a sacked coach.
  • (18) Iam not going to suggest, as some scoundrel who shares a name with me did on these pages last year, that we should welcome a recession.
  • (19) You expect Peel to have a lot of splattercore records with titles like I'll Be Glad When You're Dead – but who would have suspected a liking for a-ha's 1986 multi-platinum opus Scoundrel Days ?
  • (20) It’s a choice between scoundrels.” Many voters, especially younger ones, feel ill-equipped to make that choice.