roachy

comparative more roachy · comparative roachier · superlative most roachy · superlative roachiest

1. USResembling or characteristic of cockroaches.

   They fought like wolves for the sticky smears on discarded candy wrappers and did strange, roachy things in the folds of our blankets.

   1968, John Mac Isaac, Half the Fun Was Getting There, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, →LCCN, page 39

   5 more examples

   (a).—Active, wary, light-brown insects with a “roachy” odour, found in pantries and bakeries; several species but the most common is the Croton-Bug or German Cockroach. (Ectobia Germanica)

   1915, W. Lochhead, “Insects Affecting Shade Trees, Greenhouse Plants, Domestic Animals and the Household”, in Seventh Annual Report of the Quebec Society for the Protection of Plants from Insects and Fungous Diseases, 1914-1915, Quebec, Que.: C. E. Cinq-Mars, […], page 133

   Why, it leaves spots, and if you should take a cup and saucer, probably put coffee in it and drink out of it, you have a roachy taste which you may imagine it might be the food that is spoiled, something of that kind, but it is nothing but the liquid that comes from the mouth of the roach.

   1920, Supreme Court

   The harm the cockroach does, however, is not so much in the quantity of food it consumes as in the amount it taints and spoils; it leaves its excreta over everything, and tainted food, even when cooked, has a distinctly “roachy” flavour. This “roachy” taste and smell is communicated partly by the wax which is secreted by certain glands on the body, and partly also by the saliva ejected through the mouth.

   1921, Frederick Laing, The Cockroach: Its Life History and How to Deal with It (Economic Series; 12), London: […] [T]he Trustees of the British Museum, page 7

   They come out at night to feed and are practically omnivorous, feeding on all kinds of foodstuffs, woollens, leather, book covers, etc., and where they occur in numbers impart a disagreeable “roachy” or foetid odour to shelves or articles they run over, in addition to tainting food.

   1934 September 1, “Insect Pests and Their Control. Notes Contributed by Officers of the Entomological Branch.”, in The Agricultural Gazette of New South Wales, volume XLV, part 9, page 515

   In the country, a bare-handed beekeeper will pay you to collect the colony with the queen in tow. But I’d already made several phone calls and, except for one guy who’d go in and get ’em for seventy-five bucks, it seemed city exterminators stick to bigger game. Roachy things.

   1996, Abbie Zabar, A Growing Gardener, New York, N.Y.: Universe Publishing, Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., →ISBN

   Synonyms: cockroachy

2. USInfested with cockroaches.

   They increase - when left alone, / They will sure turn your beautiful sanctuary, / Into their roachy home.

   2017, Marslyn A Hodge, “Cock-A-Roachy”, in Expressions, Bloomington, Ind.: WestBow Press, Thomas Nelson & Zondervan, →ISBN

   4 more examples

   “Shelter is shelter, such a night as this, if it is the waste and desert gloom of Malone’s establishment with its mackerel-scented halls and roachy corners,” she continued, plunging into the shadows of the long, dim hall, and feeling in the dark for her door-knob; […]

   1882 December, Hattie Whitney, “Bachelor Brindle’s Christmas”, in Demorest’s Monthly Magazine, volume XIX, number 2/CCXV, page 68, column 2

   Another letter tells of visiting Mary Earle on Long Island. It sounds fine, but you are right that romantic things really happened in roachy kitchens and back yards.

   1937 October 8, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, edited by Andrew Turnbull, The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald, New York, N.Y.: Dell Publishing Co., Inc., published 1963, republished 1966, page 32

   Better than the years of country bars and cheap hotels, though, tuning up in dirty toilets or roachy kitchens where cooks and waiters dodged your guitar neck and wished you’d get the hell out of their way.

   1995, Robert James Waller, chapter 14, in Border Music, New York, N.Y.: Warner Books, →ISBN, page 189

   My husband and I once bought a dilapidated, roachy house in San Antonio, Texas and turned it into an adorable Mary Engelbreit cottage.

   2008, Gina Calvert, “Transformation: A Primal Reality”, in From Gravel to Glory: Becoming a House of God, Chillicothe, Oh.: DeWard Publishing Company, Ltd., →ISBN, page 27

   Synonyms: cockroachy