roguish

comparative more roguish · superlative most roguish · alternative rogueish

1. Unprincipled or unscrupulous.
2. idiomaticMischievous and playful.

   "She'll be a match for poor little Cupid, with his tiny bow and arrow, I dare say," said Grace Fitzgerald, with a roguish eye.

   1840, The Novel Newspaper, volume 2, page 8

   2 more examples

   Hortense, with her rich chestnut locks so luxuriantly knotted, plaited, twisted, as if she did not know how to dispose of all their abundance, with her vermillion lips, damask cheek, and roguish laughing eye.

   a. 1856 (date written), Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], chapter XI, in A[rthur] B[ell] Nicholls, editor, The Professor, a Tale. […], volume I, London: Smith, Elder & Co., […], published 1857, →OCLC, page 187

   Back at the sauna, Mr. Pylhhänen gives a roguish grin and says he has found the answer to the “happiest country” debate – in a very Finnish way, of course.

   2025 July 30, Mark Sappenfield, “What makes Finland the ‘world’s happiest nation’? In a word, simplicity.”, in The Christian Science Monitor

   Synonyms: roguey