Ragamuffin
//ˈɹæɡəˌmʌfɪn// noun, slang
noun, slang ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 A dirty, shabbily-clothed child; an urchin.
"I haue led my rag of Muffins where they are pepper'd: there's not three of my 150 left aliue; and they for the Townes end, to beg during life."
- 2 A domestic cat of a particular heavy, muscular, short-necked breed.
- 3 a dirty shabbily clothed urchin wordnet
- 4 A hooligan or troublemaker. slang
- 5 Alternative letter-case form of Ragamuffin (“breed of domestic cat”). alt-of
Example
More examples"I haue led my rag of Muffins where they are pepper'd: there's not three of my 150 left aliue; and they for the Townes end, to beg during life."
Etymology
From the Middle English Ragamuffyn. Of uncertain origin, according to Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable: A muffin is a poor thing of a creature, a ‘regular muff’; so that a ragamuffin is a sorry creature in rags.
Related phrases
More for "ragamuffin"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.