drabble-tail

plural drabble-tails

1. A draggle-tail; a prostitute or promiscuous woman.

   No Latin prayers or laughing drabble-tail whores.

   1998, Mark Anthony Jarman, “Skin a Flea for Hide and Tallow”, in 19 Knives, published 2008, page 71

   5 more examples

   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;

   1785, The Beauties of the Brinsleiad, page 22

   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.

   1979, Dale Riepe, The Owl Flies by Day, page 40

   Lad-loupin molls an gadabouts, / fellow-fond an sly, / flappy-skets an drabble-tails / oo'll bleed a bloke bone-dry: […]

   1985 July, Blake Morrison, “The Ballad of the Yorkshire Ripper”, in London Review of Books, volume 7, number 12

   I am told he is come back from his travels, bringing a drabble[-]tail with him, a wench from Baltimore […]

   1989, Patrick O'Brian, Fortune of War, page 147

   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.

   2014, Antonia Senior, Treason's Daughter

2. An untidy person; a general term of contempt.

   the drunken drabbletail Dublin drab

   2002, Seamus Deane, Angela Bourke, Andrew Carpenter, The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing - Volume 5, page 1607

   3 more examples

   Jinx said to Bubber [a male character]– "Aw go 'haid, drabble[-]tail. Ain' nobody studyin' yo' family."

   1994, Rudolph Fisher, The Walls of Jericho, page 14

   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.

   2002, Beverly Mai, Kate of Kentucky: Land of Blood and Plenty, page 158

   "That's as well, you low-arsed pair o' drabble-tails. I wants to see you behind a plough this afternoon. […]"

   2016, Julian Stockwin, chapter 2, in The Powder of Death

   Synonyms: clatty, dag, dirtbag, dirtball, feague, frump, grotbag, grub

3. A mess; something bedraggled or cheaply made.

   A drabble tail a trample — an empty coddle cap

   1996, John Clare, Eric Robinson, David Powell, John Clare: Poems of the Middle Period, 1822-1837: Volume V, page 752

   2 more examples

   Ngarara went in, and mistaking the post for Ruru, encircled it with the drabbletail of her dress.

   1876, Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute, page 117

   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.

   1886, Julius Stinde, The Buchholz Family: Sketches of Berlin Life - Volume 1, page 86

1. Ragtag.

   What was ailing this ordinarily competent musical flock that they should have languished into such a straggly, drabbletail gathering of barnyard fowl?

   1993, Nancy Kay Webb, “Community Concert”, in Ridge Review, volume 10, page 42

   1 more example

   Most of the inhabitants were white women, noted Tom Osborn, with lots of dirty, half-naked children hanging onto their skirts. When Osborn asked a drabbletail group gathered in front of a stick-chimney shanty to account for their husbands, two or three acknowledged the men were away soldiering; another claimed to be an old maid.

   1999, Michael Golay, A Ruined Land: The End of the Civil War, page 101