Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun One who makes a living scavenging rags and other refuse.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun One who goes about to collect rags, bones, and other waste articles of some little value, from streets, ashpits, dunghills, etc.
- noun A machine for tearing and pulling to shreds rags, yarns, hosiery, old carpet, and other waste, to reduce them to cotton or wool staple; a shoddy-machine.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun One who gets a living by picking up rags and refuse things in the streets.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A person who
scavenges rags and otherrefuse for a living
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun an unskilled person who picks up rags from trash cans and public dumps as a means of livelihood
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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Possible death mask of Shakespeare found in ragpicker’s shop.
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The ragpicker's basket is the hyphen between rags and paper, and the ragpicker is the hyphen between the beggar and the philosopher.
The Memoirs of Victor Hugo Victor Hugo 1843
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The hair of their heads and faces grew long and shaggy, while their garments would have disgusted a ragpicker.
In a Far Country 2010
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Floods in Orissa, a ragpicker on a beach, celebrations for the Prime Minister's birthday and more.
India in Pictures 2011
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Left, a ragpicker walked through garbage in search of recyclable material at a municipal waste dump near the eastern Indian city of Siliguri.
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Since then, his wife, a ragpicker, found two other broken models as she scoured the garbage dump, and he paid to have them repaired.
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The hair of their heads and faces grew long and shaggy, while their garments would have disgusted a ragpicker.
In a Far Country 2010
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But what if the artist were to involve the locals, auction off the works and donate the proceeds back to the ragpicker community?
'Waste Land,' Documentary on Brooklyn Artist and Rio's Garbage Pickers (VIDEO) The Huffington Post News Team 2010
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But what if the artist were to involve the locals, auction off the works and donate the proceeds back to the ragpicker community?
'Waste Land,' Documentary on Brooklyn Artist and Rio's Garbage Pickers (VIDEO) The Huffington Post News Team 2010
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But what if the artist were to involve the locals, auction off the works and donate the proceeds back to the ragpicker community?
'Waste Land,' Documentary on Brooklyn Artist and Rio's Garbage Pickers (VIDEO) The Huffington Post News Team 2010
bilby commented on the word ragpicker
Thinking out loud, do we have any bums, tramps and scavengers lists?
September 2, 2008
mollusque commented on the word ragpicker
You mean like bindlestiff, magpie, vulture, scrounger, clochard? Nope. No lists here.
September 2, 2008
reesetee commented on the word ragpicker
Closest I have is "Bad Guys."
September 2, 2008
ruzuzu commented on the word ragpicker
From the examples:
“The ragpicker's basket is the hyphen between rags and paper, and the ragpicker is the hyphen between the beggar and the philosopher.”
--The Memoirs of Victor Hugo
May 7, 2012