drabble-tail

English

Etymology

drabble (“to make wet and dirty by dragging through the mud”) +‎ tail

Noun

drabble-tail (plural drabble-tails)

1. A draggle-tail; a prostitute or promiscuous woman.
   • 1785, The Beauties of the Brinsleiad, page 22:

     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;

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

     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.

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

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

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

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

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

     No Latin prayers or laughing drabble-tail whores.

   • 2014, Antonia Senior, Treason's Daughter:

     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.

   • 2018, Clancy Sigal, The London Lover: My Weekend that Lasted Thirty Years:

     They're hard, often brutal, sometimes vicious to their wives, their 'drabbletails' (girlfriends), and one another.

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

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:untidy person

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

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

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

     the drunken drabbletail Dublin drab

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

     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.

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

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

3. A mess; something bedraggled or cheaply made.
   • 1876, Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute, page 117:

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

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

     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.

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

     A drabble tail a trample — an empty coddle cap

Adjective

drabble-tail

1. Ragtag.
   • 1993, Nancy Kay Webb, “Community Concert”, in Ridge Review, volume 10, page 42:

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

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

     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.