Rag-shop

noun, slang

noun, slang ·Uncommon ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A bank (financial institution). obsolete, slang

    "Downing-street must bow down before Threadneedle, and St Stephen's must crave licence of the Bank. We must not be surprised if the potent Senate of the Rag-shop should vote the Constitution void, and dismiss King, Lords, and Commons, as an expensive pageant, since they have taken our lives, properties, religion, welfare and morals, into their keeping […]"

  2. 2
    Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see rag, shop.

Example

More examples

"Downing-street must bow down before Threadneedle, and St Stephen's must crave licence of the Bank. We must not be surprised if the potent Senate of the Rag-shop should vote the Constitution void, and dismiss King, Lords, and Commons, as an expensive pageant, since they have taken our lives, properties, religion, welfare and morals, into their keeping […]"

Etymology

(bank): From the slang term rag (“a banknote”).

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.