Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. aggressive, antagonistic; also as n.

1846		New Swell’s Night Guide to the Bowers of Venus frontispiece: Introducing Houses, West-End ‘Walks,’ Chanting Slums, Flash Cribs, and Dossing Kens, with all the Rowdy-Dowdy and Flash Patter of Billingsgate and St. Giles’.
1855		M. Cummins Lamplighter 363: ‘Where has Gertrude gone?’ ‘To offer herself as a champion, grandmamma, for that little rowdy-dowdy looking child.’ .
1882		in Ogilvie.
1892		Albert Chevalier ‘We Did ’Ave a Time’ 🎵 I sang ‘The Rowdy Dowdy Boys.’.
1895		Bury Free Press 29 June 3/4: These ignorant rowdy-dowdy fellows.
1898		J.K. Jerome Second Thoughts 292: In Rook-land the rowdy-dowdy, randy-dandy, rollicky-ranky boys get up very early and go to bed in the afternoon.
1901		Daily News 10 Jan. 9/3: They commenced a music hall song — ‘A Little Bit Off the Top’, and other rowdy dowdy songs .
1915		M.G. Hayden ‘Terms Of Disparagement’ in DN IV:iii 216: rowdy-dowdy, vulgar and blackguardly. ‘Everyone who lives around there is rowdy-dowdy.’.
1928		Amer. Mercury May 78/1: Rowdy-dowdy [...] was borrowed from the more aristocratic night-men, who use it in this manner: ‘Charge on a town, make as many clouts on the kiester (safe) as necessary, and then battle the irate citizens in a rowdy-dowdy get-a-way.’ .
1942		W. Winchell On Broadway 7 Apr. [synd. col.] Listeners say it was a rowdy-dowdy tiff over a wager.
1950		Goldin et al. DAUL 181/1: Rowdy-dowdy. Rough-and-tumble.
2000		Ebonics Primer at www.dolemite.com 🌐 rowdy-rowdy Definition: gettin’ into yo shit Example: Hell yeah y’all, we bouts to get rowdy-rowdy, bout it-bout it!

2. vulgar, uncultured, rough.

1915		M.G. Hayden ‘Terms Of Disparagement’ in DN IV:iii 216: rowdy-dowdy, vulgar and blackguardly. ‘Everyone who lives around there is rowdy-dowdy.’.
1966		C. Stead Cotters’ England (1980) 59: With her nose in the air and her rowdy-dowdy ways.