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''blackguard'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260717124906-00-⌔

blackguard - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

blackguard (plural blackguards)

  • (historical) The lowest servant in a household charged with pots, pans, and other kitchen equipment.
    • ✤ Hypernym: servant
  • (dated, chiefly of men) An unprincipled, contemptible person; an untrustworthy person.
    • ✤ Synonyms: scoundrel; see also Thesaurus: jerk, Thesaurus: villain
    • ✤ A man whose manners and sentiments are decidedly below those of his class deserves to be called a blackguard.1
    • ✤ Pawn another man’s property for the sake of a meal, eat and drink one’s self to perdition, brand one’s soul with the first little sear, set the first black mark against one’s honour, call one’s self a blackguard to one’s own face, and needs must cast one’s eyes down before one’s self? Never! never!2
    • ✤ “Arrr, keelhaul the blaggards!” wrote Ty Burr in the Globe last summer, pronouncing sentence on the malefactors who brought us the second “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie.**3
  • (archaic) A man who uses foul language in front of a woman (typically a woman of high standing).

Verb

blackguard (third-person singular simple present blackguards, present participle blackguarding, simple past and past participle blackguarded)

  • (transitive) To revile or abuse in scurrilous language.
    • ✤ Persons who passed each other in boats upon the Thames used to blackguard each other, in a trial of wit4
    • ✤ The Southern Region takes, in the main, a candid line with its public. […] An ill-informed attempt to blackguard the railway publicly is likely to see the complainant put politely—but very firmly—in his place.5
    • ✤ And then the drink is very pleasant to us, and keeps up our spirits; for what could a woman in my position do without spirits, without being able to talk and blackguard and give every fellow she meets as good as he brings?6
  • (intransitive) To act like a blackguard; to be a scoundrel.

Etymology

From black +‎ guard, thought to have referred originally to the scullions and lower menials of a court, or of a nobleman’s household, who wore black liveries or blacked shoes and boots, or were often stained with soot.

Pronunciation

  • (UK) IPA: /ˈblæɡəd/
    • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
  • (US) IPA: /ˈblæɡɚd/
  • Rhymes: -æɡə(ɹ)d

Printed 2026-07-17.

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Footnotes

  1. 1830, Thomas Macaulay, Review of Robert Southey’s edition of Pilgrim’s Progress, in the Edinburgh Review ↩

  2. 1899, Knut Hamsun, “Part I”, in George Egerton [pseudonym; Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright], transl., Hunger […], London: Leonard Smithers and Co […], →OCLC, page 68: ↩

  3. 2006, Jan Freeman, ‘Blaggards’ of the year – Boston Globe ↩

  4. 1850, Robert Southey, English Manners: ↩

  5. 1962 August, “Let’s have plain speaking”, in Modern Railways, page 73: ↩

  6. 1851, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, published 1861: ↩