rudeboy

• rude boy

Borrowed from Jamaican Creole rude bwoy, rude +‎ boy.

rudeboy (plural rudeboys)

1. A male juvenile delinquent, originally in Jamaica in the 1960s.

   Synonym: Rudy

   • 2000, Timothy White, Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley:

     Leppo had been a rudeboy since his teens, earning his first three-month jail rap for vagrancy in 1971.

   • 2006, Gautam Malkani, Londonstani, HarperCollins, →ISBN, page 5:

     I still use the word rudeboy cos it’s been round for longer. People’re always tryin to stick a label on our scene. That’s the problem with havin a fuckin scene. First we was rudeboys, then we be Indian niggas, then rajamuffins, then raggastanis, Britasians, fuckin Indobrits.

   • 2020 October 4, Nosheen Iqbal, “Fashion … or fascist? The long tussle over that Fred Perry logo”, in The Observer‎, →ISSN:

     Few brands have been tussled over as hard by competing subcultures. From tennis nuts to Jamaican rudeboys, skinheads, mods, ska-punks, indie kids and Camden popstars, all have done the Perry polo before Proud Boys came along.

2. A male enthusiast of ska music.
   • 2007, Dohra Ahmad, Rotten English: A Literary Anthology:

     "I swear I've watched as much MTV Base an Juggy D videos as they have, but I still can't attain the right level a rudeboy finesse," bemoans Jas.