subs. (old).—A ragged wretch: a general term of contempt: also TATTER, and RAGS-AND-TATTERS: see quot. 1696. TATARWAGGS and TATTERWALLOPS = ragged clothes (GROSE). See TAT, 2. As adj. = ragged.
1360. CHAUCER, The Romaunt of the Rose [TYRWHITT (Routledge), 7259].
| And with graie clothis nat full clene, | |
| But frettid full of TATARWAGGES. |
1608. CAPT. JOHN SMITH, The True Travels, Adventures and Observations, I. 40. Those TATTERTIMALLIONS will have two or three horses … as well for service as for to eat.
1617. BRATHWAITE, The Smoaking Age, 147. Whole families shall maintaine their TATTERDEMALLIONS with hanging thee out in a string.
1622. MASSINGER, The Virgin Martyr, iii. 3. Hir. Why … should thou and I only be miserable TATTERDEMALIONS, ragamuffins, and lousy desperates?
1626. CAPT. JOHN SMITH, English Sea Terms, 864. TATTERTIMALLION [appears amongst new substantives].
1633. HEYWOOD, The Royal King, ii. 2 [PEARSON, Works, 1874, vi. 31]. Host. A TATTERDEMALEAN, that stayes to sit at the Ordinary to day.
1638. RANDOLPH, Hey for Honesty, iii. 1. Well spoke, my noble English TATLER.
1677. Poor Robin’s Visions, 73. Yet I have carried a great many in my Wherry Male and Females, from the Silken Whore to the pitifull poor TATTERDEMALION that have had forty times more Whip-cord given them for nothing.
1678. COTTON, Scarronides, or Virgil Travestie (1770), 10.
| There are a few TATTER-DE-MALLIONS, | |
| That (with a Pox) would be Italians. |
1687. T. BROWN, The Saints in an Uproar [Works, i. 82]. The women … exclaim against Lobsters and TATTERDEMALLIONS. Ibid., ii. 181. A couple of TATTERDEMALION hobgobblings.
1694. MOTTEUX, Rabelais, V. xxix. I wonder … what pleasure you can find in talking thus with this lousy TATTERDEMALLION of a monk.
c. 1696. B. E., A New Dictionary of the Canting Crew, s.v. TATTER-DE-MALLION, a ragged tatter’d Begger, sometimes half Naked, with design to move Charity, having better Cloths at Home. In Tatters, in Raggs. Tatter’d and Torn, rent and torn.
1700. CONGREVE, The Way of the World, iii. 5. I’ll reduce him to frippery and rags, a TATTERDEMALION! I hope to see him hung with TATTERS, like a … gibbet thief.
1771. SMOLLETT, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1900), i. 106. Mrs. Bramble … said she had never seen such a filthy TATTERDEMALION, and bid him begone.
1887. W. E. HENLEY and R. L. STEVENSON, Deacon Brodie, ii. 5. Crime’s rabble, hell’s TATTERDEMALIONS!
TO TATTER A KIP, verb. phr. (old).—To wreck a brothel.
1766. GOLDSMITH, The Vicar of Wakefield, xx. My business was … to assist at TATTERING A KIP, as the phrase was, when he had a mind for a frolic.
