ragtag and bobtail

I was put to it to conceal my contempt for this ragtag and bobtail of an army.

"Who," he asked scornfully, "is in charge of this ragtag and bobtail?"

His company - or the survivors thereof, plus the ragtag and bobtail of other broken units who'd hooked up with them - laughed some more.

"I see ragtag and bobtail.

By the 1820's, it evolved in the world of politics as ragtag and bobtail, an aristocrat's contemptuous term for "rabble."

In fact, the lead units appeared to be Northern League cavalry, but just what the rest of the ragtag and bobtail might be was another question.

Hugh Muir: Sleepy, ragtag and bobtail.

"He was supposed to send them here, or enough to let my ragtag and bobtail deliver some sort of attack on Whiskery Ambrose up in Wesleyton.

"If we find holdouts anywhere, they'll be in the palace quarter, and you can do a better job of overawing them than a ragtag and bobtail of sailors."

The Romans and the Videssian and Khatrisher ragtag and bobtail clinging to their skirts had been driven well up into the hills.

Between Montoursville and Muncy; that would be Kiestreus's infantry on this side, and probably some of Netzigon's ragtag and bobtail on the other.

The mages had promised they would do dreadful things to the ragtag and bobtail of gallowsbait from the southern cities and runaway serfs who filled out the ranks of false King Avram's army.

The Grand Dragon's new outfit, Mr. Duke told the court, was merely the "ragtag and bobtail of the old order, and their claiming to be different will not interfere with the legal procedure contemplated in any way."

Mr. Rouquie's initial chapters demonstrate how the armies of independence were not the same as the ragtag and bobtail ruffians of the caudillos and how, even more emphatically, the latter were different from the professional, or semiprofessional, forces of today.

"My opinion," Thraxton said coldly, "as I was explaining to Baron Dan here, is that Avram's ragtag and bobtail will abandon Rising Rock of their own accord, and thus there is no reason for us to stage a hard pursuit."

Trading for forty-rod whisky, to enable you to get drunk and happy and tomahawk your families, has played the everlasting mischief with the picturesque pomp of your dress, and here you are, in the broad light of the nineteenth century, gotten up like the ragtag and bobtail of the purlieus of New York.