Fashionable Words: Ragamuffin

"I'm a--a--what?"

[Sometimes words die out of fashion. But sometimes those words are good words, words with a certain appeal that can't be denied forever. Those words should be brought back into fashion, used frequently and used often. These are those words.]


Word:

Ragamuffin



Definition:  noun

A ragged, disreputable person; often a child in dirty clothes and an unkempt state.



Origin:

Nothing pleases the British like making poverty sound quaint. Charles Dickens made a career off this model after all. And like most British words, ragamuffin is a child born of many parents.

There's no be-all origin story for ragamuffin. The first known use of it was in the Middle English epic poem Piers Plowman, not to be confused with modern English media personality Piers Morgan. Written in the 1300s about a character named Will who keeps falling asleep and having dreamvisions of spiritual meetings with religious figures, it's as exciting and titillating as you might imagine 14th century sleep to be. Ragamuffin makes its first known appearance in history as Ragamoffyn, a demon's name in the poem.

Morgan, not Plowman.

Wait--does this mean we actually have been calling Tiny Tim and Oliver Twist demons all this time? Yes. Yes, that's what I'm saying. We're all terrible people, you especially. I never claimed to like Dickens.

Most sources don't know what ragamuffin evolves from. The word probably comes from some variety of surname of the time, with "rag" being what you imagine--that thing you refuse to pick up to clean your bathroom. Even the famed English word master Samuel Johnson was uncommitted to the word's birth, actually stating in his famed dictionary, "From rag and I know not what else." In other words, he's got nothing. Thanks, Sam!

I got nothing for you.

"Muffin" probably just comes from a cute English wordplay, which is as cute as the Brits get, but some claim the word evolved from Middle Dutch's muffe, which means mitten, thus the clothing angle reinforced. Muffe would sound confusing these days after all, as we'd picture a fifty-something WASPy woman in jewels who is clearly no ragamuffin.

Shakespeare ends up using the word in 1597 in his play Henry IV (I'll save you the convoluted line), but it doesn't really gain traction in popularity until the 1800s. Writers like Louisa May Alcott, Anna Sewell, and Mark Twain all use it in their novels, and Charles Dickens pretty much creates the titular ideal of a ragamuffin in Oliver Twist. Google Books' Ngram Viewer even shows the spike in usage as the 19th century rolled on:

What does this all mean?

I don't know. Just that Oliver and Tiny Tim are demons.



Most obscure UrbanDictionary.com definition of ragamuffin:

12.  A person who does not like turnips or rutabagas.



Used in a sentence:

Part of me wondered if Oliver was angelic, but something suggested he was demonic, especially considering his filthy appearance as a ragamuffin from the streets.



Why you should use ragamuffin in your everyday life:

It subtly suggests delicious breakfast treats while reminding you you're too dirty, poor, and disheveled to afford delicious breakfast treats.



Word Awesomeness Scale (1-to-5):

Four.

It loses a point for being the name of a random cat breed and obscure Christian movie.