riff-raff:
(also ‘raff’, and without the hyphen in between ‘riffraff’; mostly used as a collective noun, plural in meaning; for the right pronunciation of this word, please click here)
the riff-raff
noisy and badly behaved people or people from the lowest class of a society;
(used with a negative connotation) the common people in a community,
the junior riff-raff
When he saw a policeman approaching, one of the riff-raff at the street corner threw an empty beer can at him and ran away.
Whenever there is a clean-up in a city to host a grand ceremony, the first people to be affected are the riff-raff, the street vendors and the prostitutes that walk the streets.
There is more and more written in the papers, spoken in the speeches and shown on TV about the plight of the riff-raff that suffer at the hands of the ‘cruel society’, but none of the writers, speakers and broadcasters has ever done anything to liven up the riff-raff they ‘feed’ on!
