Etymology

riffraff

riff·raff
R1I1F4F4R1A1F4F4

Today it means: The rabble; crowds; people of a low, disreputable or undesirable class or position. Full definition →

Old French rif
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The story

  1. Old French · derived fromrif
  2. English todayriffraff

From Old French rif et raf (“one and all”), of Germanic origin. The first word is from rifler (“to scrape off”) and the last is from raffler, related to rafler (“to plunder”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.