RIFF • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Riff

"Riff" Quotes from Famous Books

... for a moment, then he went downstairs heavily, and out to the veranda where State Trooper Stormont still sat his saddle, talking to Hal Smith. On the porch a sullen crowd of backwoods riff-raff lounged in ...

— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers

... over here that signifies nothing; might just as well be Jones or Smith or Brown. We call him Parrot & Co., but the riff-raff have another name for him. The Man Who Never Talked of Home. For two or three seasons he's been going up and down the river. Ragged at times, prosperous at others. Lately it's been rags. He's always carrying that Rajputana parrot. You've seen the kind around ...

— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath

... favourite resort for mealmen and country waggoners. There was in this street also a tavern called the Turk's Head, where Haggart Hoggarty planned the murder of Mr. Steele on Hounslow Heath in 1802. Walford mentions also Rat's Castle, a rendezvous for all the riff-raff of the neighbourhood. Dyott Street was named after an influential parishioner of Charles II.'s time, who had a house here. It was later called George Street, but has reverted to ...

— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... eternally feeding? The queen knows a mighty sight better, and wouldn't ax any body to her table as had done nothing but write books or paint picters. No; old Pits is the boy for patronizing them there fellers; but mark ye, Snipe, he takes the wrong chaps. If a man is to demean himself by axing a riff-raff of authors to his house, let it be the big 'uns; I should not care to give a bit of dinner to ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... The riff-raff of the crowd consisted of the lowest class of Arabs of the city. They fortified themselves with club-like weapons, felled their victims with them, and after stripping their bodies, cast them ...

— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld

... the Cuban a good judge of men. He knew native races. He knew—what the white man generally ignores or forgets—that between the various black races are mental differences as wide as between races of other color. He knew that the Ewe negro is no more like the Riff in character, than the phlegmatic Dutchman resembles the passionate Italian. If a black, to what race did this boy belong? Was ...

— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

Words linked to "Riff" : peruse, ostinato, Berber, spiel, play