draggle-tail
(ˈdræg(ə)lteɪl)
[f. draggle v. + tail n.]
1. A draggle-tailed person; a woman whose skirts are wet and draggled, or whose dress hangs about her untidily and dirty; a slut.
| 1596 Nashe Saffron Walden 143 To see a..draggell taile run her taile into a bushe of thornes. 1611 Speed Hist. Gt. Brit. ix. xxiii. (1632) 1135 About twenty of those bemired Souldiers were slaine, and no other cry heard, but downe with the Draggle-tailes. 1725 Swift Ep. Corr. Wks. 1841 II. 572 What a draggletail she will be before she gets to Dublin! 1881 Besant & Rice Chapl. of Fleet ii. iii, A well-dressed woman and a draggletail are all one to them. |
2. pl. Skirts that drag on the ground in the mud.
| 1858 R. S. Surtees Ask Mamma lxxv. 331 Looped-up dresses..a great improvement on the draggletails. 1871 C. Gibbon Lack of Gold viii, The dress..which, to avoid draggle-tails, was worn short. |
3. attrib. = next.
| 1707 J. Stevens tr. Quevedo's Com. Wks. (1709) 420 Draggle-Tail Jilts newly Whip'd. 1879 M. E. Braddon Clov. Foot xii. 108 Nice draggle-tail creatures we shall look after we have walked..under such a rain as this. |