Runyonesque

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Resembling the colorful, slangy tales of Damon Runyon about gamblers and gangsters in old New York City
2. Having the flashy, colloquial charm of the characters and settings found in Damon Runyon's stories of Broadway
3. Suggesting the wisecracking, street-smart atmosphere of the New York underworld portrayed by writer Damon Runyon

Etymology: Damon Runyon was an American journalist and short-story writer whose tales of Broadway gamblers, bookies and nightclub performers, many set in New York in the 1930s, made his name a shorthand for a particular kind of slangy, colorful city life. His stories were written in a stylized argot, full of present-tense narration, nicknames and idiosyncratic dialogue, and the adjective formed from his name, with the suffix "-esque" (as in "picturesque" or "Kafkaesque"), describes anything that resembles his world. The formation is straightforward: a proper name plus "-esque," which English took from French and which is used to mean "in the manner of" or "resembling" a named person or work. Because the base is a surname, the adjective is best understood as a tribute to a writer's style rather than a term with its own separate history.

Synonyms: colorful, whimsical, larger-than-life

Antonyms: mundane, ordinary