Good Words for Bad Boys

Just as there seem to be more words for telling lies than telling the truth, so there seem to be more words for bad behavior than good. Today we begin to look at bad behavior:  roué, cad, rake, dissolute, and licentious, words similar to a word we saw previously, libertine. Libertine refers to someone unrestrained in their consumptions.

Let us begin with the difference between a roué, a cad, and a rake.

A rake is a garden implement that has teeth that help pull things together. The noun has been around a very long time, and the verb developed in about 1300. 

But that is not the word I mean. Rake also is defined as “a dissolute or profligate person, especially a man who is licentious; roué.” Rake was actually used first in the 1650s as a short form of the word rakehell, a word that I have never run across. 

Rakehell came into use in English in the 1540s, but its source is unknown. It may have come from a combining of the verb rake and Hell (so bad they raked Hell to find someone like that) or it could have come from the Middle English work rakel, which described something hasty or rash. But etymonline.com suggests it is probably from raken, which meant to go or proceed and came from the Old English word racian, meaning to move or hurry forward. It retains more of the meaning of rake Hell than rash behavior, but current use seems to be somewhat whimsical as if to describe a good man with a taste for bad things.

Roué is defined with the words “a dissolute or licentious person” while etymonline.com says it refers to a “debauchee” and is from the French word (we adopted it accent and all) that is used to refer to a dissipated man, rake. That does not help differentiate the words. We adopted it into English in 1800, and the French adopted it from the Latin root word rotare, which means roll and from which we get the word rotary to describe that which turns around an axis, or the turning motion.

The word roué is purported to have first been given to the companions of the Duc d’Orleans, who was the regent of France from 1715-1723. It may have been a suggestion that they deserved some round of punishment, but there is a figurative sense to the French word that suggests the subject is worn out, broken, or beat down. Its use in English has a slight negative sense but not is not as strong a descriptor as cad.

Cad is used of someone who behaves dishonorably or irresponsibly toward women, although it can also refer to a man who is simply ill-bred. (All three of these words are used of men; I have yet to encounter their use to describe a woman.)

Cad was also a shortened word, and was shortened in 1730 from the word cadet. Originally used of servants it meant a person lacked refinement (in 1838 it defined a “person lacking in finer feelings.”) According to Anthony West in his biography of his father,  “H.G. Wells: Aspects of a Life,”

A cad used to be a jumped-up member of the lower classes who was guilty of behaving as if he didn’t know that his lowly origin made him unfit for having sexual relationships with well-bred women.

So you can be a roué and still serve the leader of France, but being a rake is bad, and a cad is even worse. Next week: dissolute and licentious.