Definition of "rag"

And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm.

1684, John Dryden, Miscellany Poems: Containing a New Translation of Virgills Eclogues, Ovid's Love Elegies, Odes of Horace and Other Authors, The twenty-ninth ode of the first book of Horace

Cowls, hoods, and habits, with their wearers, toss'd, / And flutter'd into rags; then reliques, beads,

1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book III, lines 490-491

[…] even by the law of their own might and malice, not having otherwise any rag of legality to cover the shame of their cruelty.

1655, Thomas Fuller, The Church-history of Britain from the Birth of Jesus Christ until the year MDCXLVIII‎, page 399

The other zealous rag is the compositor, / Who in an angle where the ants inhabit, / (The emblems of his labors) will sit curl'd

1623, Ben Jonson, Time Vindicated to Himself and to His Honours

For upon the like Proclamation there, they all came in, both tag and rag

1596, Edmund Spenser, A Veue of the Present State of Irelande

Our ship was a clipper, with every rag set, stunsails, sky-scrapers, and all.

1864, James Russell Lowell, My Garden Acquaintance; A Good Word for Winter; A Moosehead Journal, page 83

"'Oh yes, that's all very well, but we haven't done with it yet,' said the lad, 'we shall have it worse directly,' and he ordered them to furl every rag but the mizen."

1886, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 191

"It's heaviest on the first day, which might be why it hurts so much. After that, it slows down and eventually stops, but you'll need the rags for about a week."

2020, Pip Williams, The Dictionary of Lost Words, page 56

"You must behave yourself, dear. Mr. Malone is a Pressman. He will have it all in his rag to-morrow, and sell an extra dozen among our neighbors."

1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London, New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton

"It took it out of me, though. I'm a rag this morning." "They work you too hard, dear."

1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019

the three walls around the garden, each one of thirty-three feet, were built out of three layers of stone — pebble stone, flint and rag stone.

2003, Peter Ackroyd, The Clerkenwell Tales, page 1

The rascal winked and grinned. 'There are always and means,' said he. 'But don't blame your foreman. He thought it was just a rag. I swapped clothes with his assistant, and in I came.'

1929, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, When the World Screamed‎