as in hobo
somewhat old-fashioned
a child who is dressed in rags and is usually dirty and poor
a group of barefoot ragamuffins playing in the street
Related Words
Relevance
Dissimilar Words
Example Sentences
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to
show current usage.
Read More
Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors.
Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of ragamuffin
Soon enough, Curtis’s all-black border collie, Steve, and a ragamuffin of a dog, Jack, would emerge from the trees to beg for sandwich scraps.
—
Carrie Dennis, Travel + Leisure, 14 June 2025
Playing out on a New Orleans street set designed more or less as a cartoon by David Rockwell, its pirates costumed by Linda Cho in ragamuffin seafaring garb that nonetheless allows for the odd pleasing splash of color, Pirates!
—Greg Evans, Deadline, 24 Apr. 2025
The former royal highness will be too busy leading the Resistance, alongside Jonathan and his ragamuffin group of bandits, to fight off all of the Queen’s men.
—David Fear, Rolling Stone, 19 Mar. 2025
And the best way to clear a driveway piled with snow is to hire some neighborhood ragamuffins with snow shovels, pay them some cash, and give them a belt of hot chocolate.
—Steven Levy, WIRED, 5 Apr. 2024
The young ragamuffin helped turn corrido tumbado into a global chart-topper (and moneymaker) and proved that Latin American artists don’t have to compromise to reach that level of acclaim.
—Pitchfork, 13 Dec. 2023
The Moser family — Lubo, his wife and three cheerfully ragamuffin little kids — are a troupe of travelling performers who earn their keep putting on shows in the local towns.
—Jessica Kiang, Variety, 7 Sep. 2023
The reunion between ragamuffin Georgie and boyish Jason also recalls Peter Bogdanovich’s Paper Moon from 50 years ago, a movie set during the Great Depression, an exercise in nostalgia.
—Armond White, National Review, 30 Aug. 2023
Then there is the rest of the ragamuffin roster that was picked to finish seventh in the Big 12, a conference so prestigious that its most noteworthy programs — Oklahoma and Texas — can’t wait to leave.
—Billy Witz Sasha Portis, New York Times, 31 Dec. 2022
Recent Examples of Synonyms for ragamuffin
Noun
-
In fact, she was also seen wearing these kicks in New York back in May, pairing the sneakers her aforementioned Hammitt hobo bag with gunmetal grommets.—
-
One mask depicts a frowning hobo with a 5 o'clock shadow that represents the aforementioned vagrant.—
Noun
-
In the old days beggars were drawn and quartered in that square.—
-
In Havana, beggars are ubiquitous.—
Noun
-
Told in a lingua franca of philosophy and academic jargon, Lucky’s speech has something to do with the collapse of reason and logic, and the futility of human progress, which is ultimately what tramps Estragon (Reeves) and Vladimir (Winter) are up against, too.—
-
As historian Kelly Lytle Hernández writes, one thing that stood in the way of this vision was the figure of the tramp.—
Noun
-
Cleverbot veers from sounding like a winsome waif to coming across as a drunk, smart-alecky fifteen-year-old who talks in non sequiturs.—
-
His socialite wife, Margo (Malin Akerman), quickly takes Sophie under her wing, introducing the wide-eyed waif to her gaggle of girlfriends, including Jill (Katie Lowes), the wife of the megachurch’s reverend, and Callie (Jaime Ray Newman), the sheriff’s wife.—
Noun
-
In Victorious Cupid, Caravaggio demolished Renaissance ideals of the chubby, celestial putto by depicting a young god with the body of an Adonis and the face and feet of a cheeky street urchin.—
-
After the multi-year marine heatwave hit the North Pacific in late 2013, warmer ocean temperatures that followed not only stressed kelp but also worsened the spread of sea star wasting disease that wiped out sunflower sea stars — one of the purple urchin’s main predators.—
Cite this Entry
“Ragamuffin.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/ragamuffin. Accessed 13 Jan. 2026.
Love words? Need even more definitions?
Merriam-Webster unabridged
Share