ragamuffin

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“
The word ragamuffin," he adds, with characteristic determination to be exact, "does not accurately express the man, because there is a sort of shadow or delusion of respectability about him, and a sobriety, too, and a kind of dignity in his groggy and red-nosed destitution."

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Definitions (7)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. noun A shabbily clothed, dirty child.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (4)

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Examples (50)

  • We then see a dirty little ragamuffin orphan girl grasp a biscuit from the hand of a dead soldier on a battlefield of utter carnage. —  Fantasy and Science Fiction - [Vol 111] - Issue 04-05 - October-November 2006
  • He said there was something wrong about the way they dug This differs a good deal from the treasure incident in the book, but it shows us what respect the boys had for the gifts of the ragamuffin original of Huck Finn. —  The Boys' Life of Mark Twain
  • The censorship has ruined the role of a little legitimist ragamuffin, so that the play, conceived in the spirit of strict unpartisanship, has now to flatter the reactionaries: a result that distresses me. —  The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters
  • He was a little ragamuffin, vicious and impudent, who spent his days with other rapscallions like himself, and from their company had caught not only deplorable manners, but shameful habits which good Jean-Christophe, who had never so much as suspected their existence, was horrified to see one day. —  Jean-Christophe, Vol. I
  • Unless the matter was given thought, it might not occur that the fellow was excellently disguised Señor soldado," the ragamuffin, hissed, "I have something to tell, important The officer stopped, turned and, surprised, let the tall, stooped bundle of rags come up to him. —  032 - Dust of Death
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Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English Ragamuffyn, a personal name : probably raggi, ragged (from ragge, rag; see rag1) + Middle Dutch moffel, muffe, mitten; see muff2.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. Early modern English also raggemuffin, ragamofin, ragomofin; erroneously analyzed rag-a-muffin, rag of Muffins; from Middle English Ragamoffyn, the name of a demon, prob., like many other names of demons, merely fanciful. The present sense has been partly determined by association with rag. For the sense ‘demon,’ cf. ragman.
 

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/ˈrægəməfɪn/
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