rascality

English

Etymology

From rascal +‎ -ity.

Pronunciation

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Noun

rascality (countable and uncountable, plural rascalities)

1. Rascals collectively; the rabble, the masses.
   • 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 16, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC:

     And the judgement of our inclinations and actions (the weightiest and hardest matter that is) we referre it to the idle breath of the vaine voice of the common sort and base raskalitie, which is the mother of ignorance, of injustice and inconstancie.

2. The behavior of a rascal; the quality of being a rascal.

   The two of them engaged in all kinds of rascality in college.

   • 1860, George Eliot, Mill on the Floss, Book III, Chapter VII:

     On an a priori view of Wakem's aquiline nose, which offended Mr. Tulliver, there was not more rascality than in the shape of his stiff shirt-collar, though this too along with his nose, might have become fraught with damnatory meaning when once the rascality was ascertained.

   • 1885, Ulysses S. Grant, “Preface”, in Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant Vol. I, New York, United States: Charles L. Webster & Co., page 7:

     Shortly after, the rascality of a business partner developed itself by the announcement of a failure.

   • 1924, Herman Melville, chapter 7, in Billy Budd‎^[1], London: Constable & Co.:

     The verdict of the sea quid nuncs has been cited only by way of showing what sort of moral impression the man made upon rude uncultivated natures whose conceptions of human wickedness were necessarily of the narrowest, limited to ideas of vulgar rascality,—a thief among the swinging hammocks during a night-watch, or the man brokers and land-sharks of the sea-ports.

Anagrams

• sacrality, satyrical, scalarity