scoundrelry

Etymology

 * noted in 1859.

Noun

 * 1) Villainy, evildoing; acts of villainy or evildoing
 * 2) * 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.
 * 1) * 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.
 * 1) * 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.
 * 1) Scoundrels in general; a group of scoundrels
 * 2) * 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.
 * 1) * 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.
 * 1) * 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