tatterdemalion

• But were he a mere native tatterdemalion, inclined to be truculent, Borrow's coat was off in a moment, and the challenge to decide there and then who was the better man flung forth. —  The Life of George Borrow
• Here I found a middle-aged tatterdemalion, whose flesh and costume were all of one colour, and that the precise hue of the dungheap from which he had just arisen, and from which one might have imagined him to have been engendered. —  Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852
• He is most likely tending some helpless tatterdemalion, and moving about like a clever nurse. —  A Dream of the North Sea
• And now and again in his course of fraud did he not turn a wistful eye towards any reckless tatterdemalion, if only the vagrant lived in freedom and in truth It's too bad, I say Ruining a soul so And in the midst of gulls who persistently refuse to be undeceived cheating is so "cruel easy." —  Robert Browning
• It is a whimsical caprice of fortune to present, in the grotesque person of this tatterdemalion, a namesake and descendant of the proud Alonzo de Aguilar, the mirror of Andalusian chivalry, leading an almost mendicant existence about this once haughty fortress, which his ancestor aided to reduce: yet such might have been the lot of the descendants of Agamemnon and Achilles, had they lingered about the ruins of Troy MANNERS & CUSTOMS OF ALL NATIONS ORIGIN OF EPSOM RACES Concluded from page 331. —  The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 19, No. 550, June 2, 1832

Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Used in the Same Context