scoundrelry

English

Etymology

From scoundrel +‎ -ry; noted in 1859.

Noun

scoundrelry (usually uncountable, plural scoundrelries)

1. Villainy, evildoing; acts of villainy or evildoing
   • 1894. Henry Lazarus. The English revolution of the twentieth century: a prospective history. T. F. Unwin. page 253.

     Such was Jubilee justice — capped by the liberty of any number of Society thieves to rob the poor of their earnings by means of endless quack nostrums and "Building" or other "Society" scoundrelries.

   • 1999. Dab Rebellato. 1956 and all that: the making of modern British drama. Psychology Press. page 94.

     The designer Such is the disdain now shown for theatre design in the period before Look Back in Anger, that it is automatic to imagine it as a design era of tyrannical and monstrous scoundrelry.

   • 2004. Mark Wahlgren Summers. Party games: getting, keeping, and using power in Gilded Age politics. UNC Press Books. page 115.

     Grand juries would fail to indict for bare-faced scoundrelry — as long as the accused were their scoundrels; after all, the officers picking grand jurors were good partisans themselves.

2. Scoundrels in general; a group of scoundrels
   • 1863. United States Congress. House documents.

     Messrs. Lyles and Polhamus & Co. will advise you that I have settled the iron business all O. K., to the satisfaction of all but the scoundrelry in Florida and here, who caused the difficulty.

   • 2006. Mark Copeland. The Bundle at Blackthorpe Heath. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. page 87.

     Rufus grew alarmed and in a bid to be free bit the policeman hard on the thumb. "You scoundrelry!" squealed the constable as he dropped the little beetle to the ground.

   • 2010. Arturo Pérez-Reverte. Pirates of the Levant. Penguin.

     While this jewel of the scoundrelry babbled on, I, after my initial surprise, stayed where I was, my back to the wall, hat in hand and sword in sheath, saying nothing, but waiting to see when he would finally get to the point.

Synonyms

• See Thesaurus:villainy

References

• 1910. Frederik Gadde. On the history and use of the suffixes -ery (-ry), -age, and -ment in English. Berlingska boktryckeriet. page 109.