shakerag

plural shakerags

1. A pauper; a bum.

   Well take it as they list, shakerag came in, Making no doubt but they would like of him : And twere but for his person a pretty lad Well quallified, hauing a singing trade.

   1599, Micro-cynicon: sixe snarling satyres

   2 more examples

   […] that it is our Lords intent to trie our pacience the better, when he casteth vs after that maner into contempt, no only of those that are in authoritie & estimation, but also those that are the veriest shakerags , so as we wold in our minde thinke our selues to be assaulted rather of brute beastes than of men.

   1574, Jean Calvin, Sermons on Job, page 510

   When one of the twins said that I looked like a shakerag after a full day's dusting, I was able to laugh with her, knowing full well that I would get no scolding from Mrs. Goodbody for my grubby appearance.

   2014, Laura London, A Heart Too Proud

1. A common nickname given to a poor rural town.

   We passed a little place to-day called Shakerag, which reminded us very much of a little town we passed through in Kentucky called Dogwalk.

   1882, Benjamin F. McGee, William Ray Jewell, History of the 72d Indiana Volunteer Infantry of the Mounted Lightning Brigade

   2 more examples

   Almost every cross-roads, that had a cabin and a man who could read and write enough to become Postmaster for the monthly pony mail, was at once a New London, Pekin, Liverpool or Shakerag.

   1883, William Henry Perrin, History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois

   it reaches a village that is properly called Sheltonville but which has long been known to the facetious-minded as “Shakerag.” The spot is not the only Shakerag in the state; there are some half-dozen other communities and spots in Georgia with the name, but the first locality mentioned seems to be the only such place that has a road with the same tab.

   1958, Georgia Mineral Newsletter - Volume 11, (Please provide the book title or journal name), page 102

2. A nickname sometimes given to the slum area of town in the Southern United States.

   Shakerag's nondescript shacks were alive with music day and night, a sharp contrast to the dreary, monotonous routines of work-a-day life.

   1993, Howard A. DeWitt, Elvis: The Sun Years : The Story of Elvis Presley in the Fifties, page 53

   2 more examples

   In the fall of 1946, when George was serving as the Chamber of Commerce president, Keirsey hired a new cook, an angular, twenty-six-year-old, Viceroy-smoking woman named Essie Howard, who lived in the black slum Shakerag with her husband, Seaphus, a janitor at the North Mississippi Community Hospital.

   2012, Robert Blade, Tupelo Man: The Life and Times of George McLean, page 150

   The rundown wooden structure they occupied on Mulberry Alley lay on the eastern edge of town in a mostly black neighborhood called “ShakeRag.”

   2014, Joel Williamson, Elvis Presley: A Southern Life