scampishness

Gomes's style is full of cadence, roguery, and scampishness, which is redemptive.

Boston.com Top Stories 2011

While a true scamp, say, Billy Carter, could never get near the White House as anything other than a presidential sibling/embarrassment, once a legitimate candidate clears the vetting threshold, an absence of scampishness will doom his or her chances for victory.

Seth Greenland: Scamps vs. Dorks: Why Do We Want to Have a Beer with the President? 2008

When Clara should be ruined by the baseness and villainy and general scampishness of this man whom she was going to marry to whom she was about to be weak enough and fool enough to trust herself then he would interpose and be her brother once again a broken-hearted brother no doubt, but a brother efficacious to keep the wolf from the door of this poor woman and her children.

The Belton Estate 2004

Strange to say, his poverty and his scampishness and his lies almost recommended him to her.

Can You Forgive Her? 1993

These form a very considerable proportion of our fashionable youth, and combine the gentleman with a dash of the _petit-maitre_, overlaying a naturally good disposition with a surface of scampishness, which, however, they lay down when they marry, and thenceforward they belong altogether to the slow school.

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 327, January, 1843 Various

For the skittish skies skewed and skedaddled and skulked and skipped and scrubbed and screwed and screamed and scrawled and scooped and scrabbled and scrambled and scambled and scumbled and scraped and scrunched and scudded and scuttled and scuffled and skimped and scattered in such scandalous scampishness that the scornful scholars scoffed.

The Dozen from Lakerim Rupert Hughes 1914

The brains of the whole company were excited, and they revelled in every form of scampishness.

The Shellback's Progress In the Nineteenth Century Walter Runciman 1892

Die Baring would not tolerate his boon companions -- not that he wanted her to tolerate them; she would not suit for his mistress and manager if she did; though where she got her niceness -- seeing what her father was up to in cool, barefaced scampishness, in horse-flesh, bones, and pasteboard -- he could not tell.

Girlhood and Womanhood The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes Sarah Tytler 1870

Strange to say, his poverty and his scampishness and his lies almost recommended him to her.

Can you forgive her? 1864

Poor child, that would not have weighed with her a moment though -- it puts me out of patience to know how fond she is of him -- but for his scampishness, which made it a clear duty to refuse him.

Hopes and Fears or, scenes from the life of a spinster Charlotte Mary Yonge 1862