Louche.
Adjective: not reputable or decent; dubious, shady.
[Origin: French, literally, cross-eyed, squint-eyed, Old French losche, from Latin luscus blind in one eye.]
“And so it is with old HPL: the very model of an 18th century hipster, born decades too late to be one of the original louche laudanum-addicted romantic poets, and utterly unafraid to bore us by droning on and on about the essential crapness of culture since Edgar Allen Poe, the degeneracy of the modern age, &c. &c. &c.”
– Equoid: A Laundry Novella, Charles Stross.
Richard E. Grant does louche better than any other actor I can think of.
Yes, he does. I think Robert Carlyle also does louche remarkably well, with added intensity.
And I thought “louche” just meant absinthe or pastis going “milky” because of water added to either.
Huh. I’ve never heard of it being used in that context.
There is a Wikipedia article about the effect.
I know about the effect, just never heard it called louche.
I’m not sure if actual pastis-drinking Frenchmen/women use the word in the context of their drink. The first I’ve encountered the word “louche” must have been in some absinthe page in Geocities, probably created by some American hipster, long time ago.
The link to Wikipedia was meant mostly as evidence that some people use the word, also to clarify what I was describing.