rough talk

• roughtalk (rare)

rough talk (uncountable)

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   Antonym: smooth talk

   • 1910 September 3, Brooklyn Life: The Illustrated Home Weekly for Brooklyn and Long Island, volume XLI, number 1070, Brooklyn, N.Y.: Brooklyn Life Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 12, column 1:

     Bryan had only the advantage of being a smoother talker! but smooth talk would ill befit a rough rider and rough talk if anything is is the more pleasing to the “peepul.”

   • 1931 November 25, Ed. S. Snover, “Smilax”, in Port Huron Times Herald, Port Huron, Mich., →OCLC, page 6, column 2:

     Actor’s rough talk irks auto salesman.—Headline. After, we suspect, the auto salesman’s smooth talk had irked the actor.

   • 1957 April 22, “Blowing Hot and Cold”, in The Vancouver Sun, volume LXXI, number 167, Vancouver, B.C., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 4, column 2:

     The new Khrushchev and Zhukov warnings last Friday fit more closely into the pattern of threats and warnings recently issued to smaller nations in the Western alliance, to beware of Soviet nuclear retaliation if they permit U.S. missile bases to be built on their soil. Yet smooth talk and rough talk are probably attributable to the same motives. The Russians are acting scared.

   • 1967 February 19, George Raynor, “Facts and Fancies: The Pill for RMH IIIs Was Sugar Coated”, in James F. Hurley, III, editor, Salisbury Sunday Post, Salisbury, N.C., →OCLC, page 2C, column 7:

     I don’t go along with many who believe the report was a whitewash job. I rather believe that rough talk in this case would have accomplished more than the smooth talk will.

   • 2000, Randall Craig, “Promising Marriage in The Egoist”, in Promising Language: Betrothal in Victorian Law and Fiction, Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, →ISBN, page 209:

     The force of such promises is figurative, referring to the nature and intensity of the speaker’s feeling. They are a categorical example of “rough talk,” although one easily transposed into the “smooth talk” of Don Juan.

   • 2008, Ken Greenwood, “Considerations of Natural Value”, in Grassroots Ecology: A Call for Help, Lanham, Md.: Hamilton Books, →ISBN, chapter 28 (The Least of These), page 317:

     As a tree grows, it is protected by bark. Some trees have smooth bark. Some values are protected by smooth talk. Or, the tree can have rough bark. Values can be protected or defended by rough talk.