Search the Dictionary

To wet and soil by dragging on the ground, mud, or wet grass; to drabble; to trail. Gray. With draggled nets down-hanging to the tide. Trench.

A slattern who suffers her gown to trail in the mire; a drabble-tail.

A crowd, a rabble. [Obs.] ares.

A crowd of low people; a rabble. But far more numerous was the herd of such Who think too little and who talk too much. Dryden. You can never interest the common herd in the abstract question. Coleridge. Herd's grass (Bot.), one of several species of grass, highly esteemed for hay. See under Grass.

Incapable of erring; infallible; unerring. "Inerabble and requisite conditions." Sir T. Browne. "Not an inerrable text." Gladstone.

a layman or the laity. "Laical literature." Lowell. An unprincipled, unedified, and laic rabble. Milton.

Belonging to the lower classes, or the rabble; idle and lawless; bad; vicious. [Archaic] Chaucer. But the Jews, which believed not, . . . took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort, . . . and assaulted the house of Jason. Acts xvii. 5. Too lewd to work, and ready for any kind of mischief. Southey .…

Dull; stupid. Shak. A rabble of loggerheaded physicians. Urquhart.

manages; a conductor or director; as, the manager of a theater. A skillful manager of the rabble. South.

verse sorts; promiscuous; heterogeneous; as, a miscellaneous collection. "A miscellaneous rabble." Milton. -- Mis`cel*la"ne*ous*ly, adv. -- Mis`cel*la"ne*ous*ness, n.

Hence: A throgn; a rabble; esp., an unlawful or riotous assembly; a disorderly crowd. The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease. Pope. Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob. Madison. Confused by brainless mobs. Tennyson. Mob law, law administered by the mob; lync…

A collection of people; a throng; a rabble. [Colloq.]

The sweepings of society; the rabble; the mob; -- chiefly used in the compound or duplicate, riffraff.

her; as, to rake together wealth; to rake together slanderous tales; to rake together the rabble of a town.

One of the rabble; a low, common sort of person or creature; collectively, the rabble; the common herd; also, a lean, ill- conditioned beast, esp. a deer. [Obs.] He smote of the people seventy men, and fifty thousand of the rascal. Wyclif (1 Kings [1 Samuel] vi. 19). Poor men alone No, no; the noblest deer hath them [h…

Thomson. There is something inexpressibly pleasing in the annual renovation of the world. Rabbler.

A rabble; a riotous assembly; a mob. [Obs.]

A rough, coarse fellow; collectively, the lowest class of the people; the rabble; the riffraff. [Colloq. U.S.]

A disorderly and tumultuous crowd; a mob; hence, the rabble; the herd of common people. the endless routs of wretched thralls. Spenser. The ringleader and head of all this rout. Shak. Nor do I name of men the common rout. Milton.

To clamber with hands and knees; to scrabble; as, to scramble up a cliff; to scramble over the rocks.