What's the difference between hoodlum and ruffian?

Hoodlum


Definition:

  • (n.) A young rowdy; a rough, lawless fellow.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Olusola Amore, a police official, appealed for members of the public to come forward "with information on the identity and location of these hoodlums".
  • (2) Manchester City will splurge on the Shakhtar Donetsk defender Fernandinho, Real Madrid hoodlum Pepe , the Málaga playmaker Isco and the Barcelona midfielder Thiago Alcântara .
  • (3) Into the Rover's Return swaggered three young hoodlums looking for trouble.
  • (4) Photograph: Kobal In the wild west, English expat John Tunstall (Terence Stamp) runs a finishing school for hoodlums, demanding proper table manners and teaching them to read.
  • (5) "The one above looks like a hoodlum has stabbed him in the head with a twig."
  • (6) Rising star Zheng Kuo's Burned Wings is a reckless study of young north-eastern hoodlums mixing violence, sex and comedy.
  • (7) Drug addicts and hoodlums took advantage … to burn tyres," Majiya told AP.
  • (8) During that time, you couldn't walk to the station in the morning without getting high on the smoke being puffed out all over the place by every Nike-wearing hoodlum.
  • (9) By far the most celebrated gangster of the day, though, was Al Capone, a New York-born hoodlum who controlled much of the Chicago underworld in the mid-1920s.
  • (10) Fearless and filled with righteous conviction, she confronts hoodlums and comforts the bereaved with such an extraordinary mixture of sense and sensitivity that you wonder why she isn't involved in a larger scale undertaking, like running the UN or the world.
  • (11) Juan Abbate, the owner of the family bakery where Mujica worked as a boy, described how he had once been prevented from making a delivery by a gang of teenage pasta-base hoodlums.
  • (12) Having been the target of protesters herself, Redgrave complimented her audience that they “stood firm and you have refused to be intimidated by the threats of a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums whose behaviour is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world and their great and heroic record of struggle against fascism and oppression … I salute you and I thank you and I pledge to you that I will continue to fight against antisemitism and fascism.” Marlon Brando for The Godfather, 1973 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Native American activist Sacheen Littlefeather collects Marlon Brando’s best actor Oscar.
  • (13) The other is the opportunity these divisions offer the new guy on the Afghan block – the black-flagged hoodlums of Islamic State.
  • (14) This might sound like an everyday scene for a hip city beach, but when I lived in Brazil 20 years ago, people in Rio seemed almost scared to blink lest their bags were snatched from their hands; and the busker's hat would have been nicked by hoodlums, along with his sax.
  • (15) Here we turn to the unfortunate spectacle of Tommy Robinson (Stephen Yaxley-Lennon), chief hoodlum of the English Defence League, serial offender against community cohesion, claiming the high ground because one of Selfridges' assistants recognised him and refused to serve an associate of his .
  • (16) Just because someone wears a hoodie does not make them a hoodlum."
  • (17) He has Tunstall assassinated, and the hoodlums band together as the Regulators to seek revenge.

Ruffian


Definition:

  • (n.) A pimp; a pander; also, a paramour.
  • (n.) A boisterous, cruel, brutal fellow; a desperate fellow ready for murderous or cruel deeds; a cutthroat.
  • (a.) brutal; cruel; savagely boisterous; murderous; as, ruffian rage.
  • (v. i.) To play the ruffian; to rage; to raise tumult.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Behind the Manchester ruffian image, they were conscientious people.
  • (2) These trousers, it later transpired, cost £995, and Nicky Morgan duly seized that predictable bait and snorted, “I don’t think I’ve ever spent that much on anything apart from my wedding dress.” After all, she added, while possibly patting a young local ruffian on the head, “My barometer is always, ‘How am I going to explain this in Loughborough market?” I think this was Morgan’s clueless way of saying she keeps it real, but it didn’t really work because those trousers looked exactly like the kind of thing sold in my local market, which, just this weekend, alongside the £1 Christmas crackers, was selling leather bustiers and disgusting, studded leather jackets.
  • (3) Two centuries later, Ruskin echoed these sentiments: Caravaggio, he claimed, painted “for the sake of the shadows”, and he was a “ruffian … distinguished only by his preference for candlelight and reinforcement of villainy”.
  • (4) Budget night at the opera: 28 March 1980 The souvenir programme (with it being a gala night, the programme cost more than a seat in some other theatres) promised "knights, esquires, ladies, ruffians, pages, maskers, soldiers, ushers, halberdiers, cupbearers and gondoliers."
  • (5) With their tight jeans and updated teddy-boy styles, the four gaff lads exude rough sex: they could have walked straight out of the Smiths's "Rusholme Ruffians" from the album Meat is Murder.

Words possibly related to "hoodlum"