1 a tough sturdy person 20-.
2 a robber, a plunderer: Now, don’t you be getting ideas like that in your head – sure, he’s a rugger is my cousin, a hardy chiel [young man], with a lot to live for, and, as for time [in prison], well, it’ll flee [fly] by. la15-. etymology: often in the phrase rugger and reiver; Older Scots ruggar ‘a plunderer or robber, a reiver’; obsolete in Modern Scots; sense 1 attested by JS