A “blackguard” (BLAG-urd) is a rude or unscrupulous person, a scoundrel. The word originally referred to the lowest servants of a nobleman’s household, jokingly called the “black guard.”
Example (as used by Saul David in Prince of Pleasure): “The years, as time went on, imparted to him that peculiar majesty that white-haired blackguards, successful (and unpunished) criminals, seem generally to possess.”
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