daggle-tail

plural daggle-tails

1. archaicA slovenly woman; a slattern; a draggle-tail.

   "Daggle-tail,” Emrys replied with a cheeky grin.

   2018, Jennifer Silverwood, Silver Hollow, page 173

   5 more examples

   for she was no daggle-tail I will be bound, but as neat a lass as Sarah o ' Richard's, every bit.

   1862, Tim Bobbin, John Corry, The Works of Tim Bobbin, Esq: In Prose and Verse, page 513

   He co'de her a mismanner't daggle-tail, —- an ' a mawkin', — an' a daffockin', sloppety sliven, an' an ill-contrive't snicketty fussock, -an' sich like.

   1883, Edwin Waugh, The chimney corner

   Do you have a daggle-tail's drawers stuffed in your ears?

   2019, Alex Gardiner, Mossbelly MacFearsome and the Dwarves of Doom

   Setting aside the dubious masturbatory potential of such passages (and thus runs the whole book) we may have to accept that this was probably not the meat-and-potatoes monologue of the averate sporting lady, daggle-tail or nymph of darkness.

   2019, Jonathon Green, Sounds & Furies

   Every shawlie and shabaroon, every larrikin and scut, every slut, daggle-tail, trollop and streel, frowsy old bowsies and loitering corner-boy sprawlers in caps, every farthing-face and ha'pennyboy, every gutty, gouger, louser, glugger, nudger, sharper, shloother, head, every whore's melt of them, mister-me-friend and go-by-the-wall, the dogs in the street themself—- all rascaldom wa making for Mr. Mack's tram-stop;

   2002, Jamie O'Neill, At Swim, Two Boys, page 501

2. attributiveobsoleteoftenClothes that are filthy at the bottom from dragging through the mud.

   He says, —- come and dine here as soon as you can; With your haily, gaily, Gambo raily, Giggling, niggling, galloping Galloway Daggle tail dreary dun.

   1795, “Mr. Harris' Musical Farce”, in The Tomahawk! or, Censor general, volume 1, number 113, page 289

   3 more examples

   This fact admitted of gentlemen of wit and pleasure murmuring, and being shocked at the sight of so many daggle-tail parsons, who happened to fall in their way , and offend their eyes ;

   1708, Jonathan Swift, Arguments against the Abolition of Christianity

   And rather than she wou'd take up her Coat, With such a shameless Daggle-tail did trot, To keep her Followers from fight provoking Of blew, of russet, or of yellow Stocking?

   1924, William Wycherley, Montague Summers, “Hero and Leander”, in Miscellany poems concluded

   That it would afford him more entertainment to sit up to the chin in water for an hour than be obliged to listen to the whining daggle-tail Cibber, during the tedious representation of a fulsome tragedy without the possibility of receiving from it either pleasure or instruction.

   1998, James Boswell, Robert William Chapman, Life of Johnson, page xxxiii