Word.ws English Dictionary

rags and tatters

rags and tatters noun: very old, torn clothes.

Noun

rags and tatters pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) very old, torn clothes
    • ...she was sworn just as she was, all rags and tatters.2002, C. L. Brightwell, Memorials of the Early Lives and Doings of Great Lawyers, page 198
  2. (broadly, plural, plural-only) something ruined; fragments
    • December 17 2001, Russell Thomas, The Guardian Sports section.
      Fulham's defence was a thing of rags and tatters long before the end.

Questions about rags and tatters

What does rags and tatters mean?
Rags and tatters means very old, torn clothes.
What part of speech is rags and tatters?
Rags and tatters is a noun.

Words near rags and tatters in the dictionary

  1. ragpicker
  2. ragpickers
  3. ragpicking
  4. ragpicks
  5. rags
  6. rags and tatters
  7. rags off
  8. rags on
  9. rags out
  10. rags the puck
  11. rags to riches

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rags and tatters (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “rags and tatters.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rags_and_tatters. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.