drabble-tail
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Forms: form: drabble-tails
Etymology: From drabble (“to make wet and dirty by dragging through the mud”) + tail.
Senses: examples: text: Whose tinsel robes of tawdry language trail, Slatterns in fine attire, a drabble tail; Whose monft'rous thoughts, diminutive and vile, Seem pigmy pages to a giant style;
ref: 1785, The Beauties of the Brinsleiad, page 22:
text: If the rubber piled up to the ceiling she would simply move to another room. His disgust with such slatternly, drabbletail customs of India rose to the surface as he slapped twenty-rupees in the crack-salesman's light-colored palm. The girl winked at the pimp as he slipped out to the hallway.
ref: 1979, Dale Riepe, The Owl Flies by Day, page 40:
text: Lad-loupin molls an gadabouts, / fellow-fond an sly, / flappy-skets an drabble-tails / oo'll bleed a bloke bone-dry: […]
ref: 1985 July, Blake Morrison, “The Ballad of the Yorkshire Ripper”, in London Review of Books, volume 7, number 12:
text: I am told he is come back from his travels, bringing a drabble[-]tail with him, a wench from Baltimore […]
ref: 1989, Patrick O'Brian, Fortune of War, page 147:
text: No Latin prayers or laughing drabble-tail whores.
ref: 1998, Mark Anthony Jarman, “Skin a Flea for Hide and Tallow”, in 19 Knives, published 2008, page 71:
text: A couple of hundred papist drabble-tails, found begging for quarter with whorish mouths, are heaped by some wagons, where his men eye them hungrily.
ref: 2014, Antonia Senior, Treason's Daughter:
text: They're hard, often brutal, sometimes vicious to their wives, their 'drabbletails' (girlfriends), and one another.
ref: 2018, Clancy Sigal, The London Lover: My Weekend that Lasted Thirty Years:
glosses: A draggle-tail; a prostitute or promiscuous woman.
examples: text: Jinx said to Bubber [a male character]– "Aw go 'haid, drabble[-]tail. Ain' nobody studyin' yo' family."
ref: 1994, Rudolph Fisher, The Walls of Jericho, page 14:
text: the drunken drabbletail Dublin drab
ref: 2002, Seamus Deane, Angela Bourke, Andrew Carpenter, The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing - Volume 5, page 1607:
text: The mule didn't budge. "Gol-danged son of a splinter-cat!! Hee-yah...Hee-yah!" The man then resorted to a blow with a heavy, stick.^([sic]) "In all my born days I never seen such a ornery, blamed drabbletail!" he yelled.
ref: 2002, Beverly Mai, Kate of Kentucky: Land of Blood and Plenty, page 158:
text: "That's as well, you low-arsed pair o' drabble-tails. I wants to see you behind a plough this afternoon. […]"
ref: 2016, Julian Stockwin, chapter 2, in The Powder of Death:
synonyms: word: clatty
word: dag
word: dirtbag
word: dirtball
word: feague
word: frump
word: grotbag
word: grub
word: meff
word: oinker
word: pig
word: ragtag
word: schlep
word: schlump
word: scruff
word: scruffbag
word: scruffball
word: scunge
word: shabaroon
word: slob
word: slotch
word: slammock
word: slummock
word: soap dodger
word: mudlark
glosses: An untidy person; a general term of contempt.
examples: text: Ngarara went in, and mistaking the post for Ruru, encircled it with the drabbletail of her dress.
ref: 1876, Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute, page 117:
text: Probably she got it on hire from some cheap costume dealer in the Brunnen Strasse or some such locality. It was a perfect drabbletail, and looked hideous.
ref: 1886, Julius Stinde, The Buchholz Family: Sketches of Berlin Life - Volume 1, page 86:
text: A drabble tail a trample — an empty coddle cap
ref: 1996, John Clare, Eric Robinson, David Powell, John Clare: Poems of the Middle Period, 1822-1837: Volume V, page 752:
glosses: A mess; something bedraggled or cheaply made.