What's the difference between ruffian and scoundrel?

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.

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.