Monday, November 26, 2007

A waif in tattered clothing -- a ragamuffin

from www.wordsmith.org

ragamuffin (RAG-uh-muf-in) noun
Someone, especially a child, in ragged, dirty clothes.
[After Ragamoffyn, a demon in William Langland's 14th century poem
Piers Plowman.]

"There were ragamuffins filled with certainties on every streetcorner
and philosophers in every coffeehouse."
-- Earl Shorris; A Nation of Salesmen; Harper's (New York); Oct 1994.

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