A scruffy, ragged person, especially a child. One of the oldest words on the list — in the 1300s it was the name of a demon.
What it really means
A ragamuffin is a scruffy person — these days, nearly always a scruffy child. It is the gentlest word on this list now. It was the most frightening once.
In the mid-1300s, ragamuffin was the name of a demon. The devil in medieval imagination was a ragged, shaggy thing — ragged was used of him from around 1300 — and William Langland gives the name Raggeman to a demon in the late fourteenth century. An Old French mystery play has a demon called Ragamoffyn.
By 1344 it was also a surname: the records mention an Isabella Ragamuffyn, who presumably had views on it. By the end of that century it meant a ragged lout. Only in the 1580s does it arrive at the modern sense — a dirty, disreputable boy. The 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue has it as a ragged fellow, one all in tatters.
The rag is clear. The -muffin has defeated everyone. The OED calls it a fanciful ending; another suggestion is Middle Dutch muffe, a mitten. Samuel Johnson gave the best answer of all: From rag and I know not what else.
Six hundred years ago it named something from hell. Now it is what you call a child with jam on his face.
Where it comes from
Samuel Johnson's etymology: 'From rag and I know not what else.'
Myths & misconceptions
Ragamuffin is a cosy, old-fashioned word for a scruffy child.
That is where it ended up. In the 14th century it was the name of a demon — the devil was often pictured as ragged and shaggy — and it only came to mean a grubby boy in the 1580s.
How it connects
Questions people ask
- Was ragamuffin really a demon's name?
- Yes. In the mid-14th century it was used as the name of a demon, and a demon called Ragamoffyn appears in an Old French mystery play.
- Where does the 'muffin' come from?
- Nobody knows for sure. The OED calls it a fanciful ending; another suggestion is Middle Dutch muffe, a mitten. Samuel Johnson simply wrote: 'From rag and I know not what else.'