Talk:rowdie

Tea room discussion

Note: the below discussion was moved from the Wiktionary:Tea room.

I have a question about the word "rowdy". Yesterday at my sons' football practice, the cheerleaders were doing a cheer. "r-o-w-d-i-e thats how we spell rowdy...we're rowdy". Could I be wrong in their spelling of rowdy? To my knowledge...there is only one way to spell it. Could you help please? When I mentioned it to the cheeleading coach...she said she looked it up in the dictionary. Thanks Lisa

rowdie was used in the 19th century, when the word seems to have entered mainstream English. w:Rowdie is the name of the mascot red bear of the AAA baseball team, the Indianapolis Indians. You can tell the coach that it is the olde-fashioned spelling that Charles Dickens used when writing about his travels in America:

• The roughest private soldier in the army, the noisiest rowdie in New York, the humblest ostler, or porter, or stage-driver, long-shore man, or dustman, or scavenger, speaks the language used here by tolerably educated tradespeople.

"r-o-w-d-i-e / that's how Dickens spellt it / We're rowdie."

Also, in Scottish English, an old dictionary shows it as meaning "a big lusty woman", just the kind of image you'd want for cheerleaders. DCDuring TALK 14:57, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Rowdie is an American slang, the meaning of which is synonymous with the fourth sense of "jock" (second etymology), an "enthusiastic athlete or sports fan". That's probably why they got the two confused.--TBC 15:03, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Rowdie is also a cheerleader acronym for "Ruthless, Obnoxious, Wild, Dedicated, Insane, Egotistical, Students", apparently.--TBC 15:08, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

  Simple answer is rhyming. R-O-W-D-Y shouted out by letter doesn't rhyme with the word rowdy but 

R-O-W-D-I-E does.