draggle-tail

noun

Etymology

From draggle (“to make wet and muddy by dragging along the ground”) + tail. Implying that such a person's gown trailed in the mire or along the ground.

  1. derived from *deḱ-
  2. derived from *doḱ-
  3. inherited from *taglą
  4. inherited from *tagl
  5. inherited from tæġl
  6. inherited from tail
  7. compounded as draggle-tail — “draggle + tail

Definitions

  1. A slut or slattern

    A slut or slattern; a slovenly woman.

    • It was a long canting monologue, which ended with, "And a lady is just what you are not — you don't even wear under-drawers, you draggle-tail!" Whereupon in her fury she lifted her skirts and showed me that she did wear underdrawers.
  2. Dirty, untidy, ragtag.

    • You notice that across the lawn the coppice looks not so wind-beaten and draggletail as it did a while ago.
    • —words spliced to form draggletail phrases met by brittle conjunctions– We two are poorly bound
    • Dirty, draggletail, it was nevertheless an important street […]

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for draggle-tail. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA