How to Use riffraff in a Sentence

riffraff

noun
  • Try not to associate with that riffraff.
  • There’s a gate topped with barbed wire to keep the riffraff out, and then long and winding stairs down to the sea.
    — Stephen Rodrick, Variety, 13 Sep. 2023
  • For a bar owner, tossing the riffraff is a matter of survival.
    — al, 1 Dec. 2022
  • Tour buses are no longer allowed to cruise the street, and the stores have other ways to keep out the riffraff.
    — Laura Randall, Washington Post, 13 June 2019
  • Instead a complex system of semiotics did the job of weeding out the riffraff.
    — wsj.com, 17 Apr. 2023
  • This is much more than rich people participating in some fight to keep the riffraff off the lake.
    — Washington Post, 27 Aug. 2017
  • Yes, the usual riffraff tried gatecrashing and engaged in drunken brawls.
    — Tribune News Service, cleveland, 10 July 2021
  • Right now, companies and governments want to make sure that the riffraff is out of the space so that the masses can trust it.
    — Rose Minutaglio, Cosmopolitan, 31 Jan. 2018
  • The Standard’s interior is sleek yet warm and devoid of riffraff.
    — Bob Carlton | [email protected], al, 27 July 2023
  • Aaron wants stars, aspiring-stars, and pure riffraff in the same loud room with garage ops and billion-dollar corporations.
    — Cole Louison, GQ, 3 Apr. 2018
  • Boba turned and scanned the alcoves again, ignoring the riffraff who stared at him, and raised his eyebrows at the sight of a familiar face.
    — Brian Truitt, USA TODAY, 22 Aug. 2023
  • In those days, design students were not allowed to go to the school lunchroom because we weren’t supposed to mingle with the art school riffraff.
    — New York Times, 3 Oct. 2019
  • This keeps the riffraff at bay, but can also cause the body to reject unrecognized things like transplanted organs.
    — Breanna Draxler, Discover Magazine, 24 Jan. 2013
  • But our approach activated the club’s riffraff-control system.
    — Ruth Walker, The Christian Science Monitor, 15 June 2017
  • Imagine the bargain-hunting riffraff such an establishment might attract.
    — Rex Huppke, chicagotribune.com, 10 Mar. 2021
  • At Twitter, King Troll has opened the gates of hell, letting back in all the riffraff the previous owners kicked out.
    — al, 1 Dec. 2022
  • Can the people with the largest and most loyal followings really wade through the riffraff, the jokesters, the unqualified to find the candidate of their dreams who is also not a stalker?
    — Kenzie Bryant, Vanities, 24 Apr. 2017
  • Then came the rare native Hawaiians, then the various riffraff of white newcomers from the continent, then the Chinese with their skill in amassing money.
    — John Dos Passos, National Review, 28 Sep. 2020
  • In , historian Ted Gioia reclaims the story of music for the riffraff, insurgents, and provocateurs.
    — Ted Gioia, Smithsonian, 18 Oct. 2019
  • Looking freshly unexpected need not mean transmitting the careless disregard of today's airport riffraff.
    — J.j. Martin, Harper's BAZAAR, 18 Nov. 2008
  • She was raised on a 3,000-acre cattle ranch in Santa Barbara, and in isolation since, in Francis’s view, even the local gentry was riffraff.
    — Lili Anolik, Vanities, 14 Dec. 2017
  • Other series like The Sims use reality as a canvas, using realistic imitations of your favorite house plants, candles, posters and the other riffraff that pepper your world to reconstruct a more relaxing one.
    — Aigner Loren Wilson, Washington Post, 18 Jan. 2023
  • Land of the Dead (2005), in which the remaining living humans had walled themselves into their own fortified city to keep the riffraff out, was a meditation (with zombies) on gentrification as a mode of social and geographical segregation.
    — Stephanie Zacharek, Time, 18 July 2017

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'riffraff.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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