daggle-tail

English

Noun

daggle-tail (plural daggle-tails)

1. (archaic) A slovenly woman; a slattern; a draggle-tail.
   • 1862, Tim Bobbin, John Corry, The Works of Tim Bobbin, Esq: In Prose and Verse, page 513:

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

   • 1883, Edwin Waugh, The chimney corner:

     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.

   • 2018, Jennifer Silverwood, Silver Hollow, page 173:

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

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

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

   • 2019, Jonathon Green, Sounds & Furies:

     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.

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

     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;

   • 2021, Eleanor Porter, The Good Wife:

     He shouldn't be kept waiting by a daggle-tail such as you.

   • 2022, Mrs. Ward Humphry, The History of David Grieve:

     Why conno yo say reet out 'at it's a pleace not fit for ony decent dot to put his head in, an' an ill-mannert daggle-tail of a woman to keep it, as I'd like to sweep out wi th' bits of a morning, an' leave her on th' muck-heap wheer she belongs?

2. (obsolete, often used attributively) Clothes that are filthy at the bottom from dragging through the mud.
   • 1708, Jonathan Swift, Arguments against the Abolition of Christianity:

     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 ;

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

     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.

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

     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?

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

     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.

Related terms

• daggle-tailed