Roist

Part of speech: noun, verb

Definitions

1. A person engaged in rough, noisy, or boisterous behavior, often disruptive in nature
2. someone who creates mayhem or excitement, typically in a group setting
3. an individual known for rowdy antics and playful unruliness in a social context

Etymology: "Roist" is a Scots and northern English word, recorded in the sense "to boast" or "to swagger" before it came to mean a noisy, boisterous person. Its origin is uncertain. Scottish dictionaries link it to the older verb "roisten," meaning to bluster or to swagger, and that verb is generally treated as the closer ancestor. Some scholars have suggested a connection to Old Norse, but the evidence for that is thin, so it is safer to say the word's roots lie in Scots and northern dialect. The verb and the noun share a rough, swaggering energy. Its sense of loud self-assertion gradually turned into a description of the rowdy person who displays it, and the word is still mostly heard in Scotland and the north of England. Because it is dialectal, it appears far less often in standard dictionaries than words like "roister," which is a related form with a similar meaning.

Synonyms: brawl, fight, scuffle, fracas, melee

Antonyms: peace, harmony, truce, ceasefire, quiet