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   Word of the Day for Monday October 15, 2001:

   tatterdemalion \tat-ur-dih-MAIL-yuhn; -MAY-lee-uhn\, noun:
   A person dressed in tattered or ragged clothing; a ragamuffin.
   adjective:
   Tattered; ragged.

     Last  time peasant blouses surfaced, in the 1960s and '70s,
     they  were part of an epidemic of Indian bedspread dresses,
     homemade  blue-jean  skirts,  Army  surplus  jackets, Greek
     bookbag   purses   and   love  beads,  the  whole  eclectic
     tatterdemalion  mix meant to express egalitarian sentiments
     and countercultural solidarity with underdogs everywhere.
     --Patricia  McLaughlin, "The peasant look," [1]Philadelphia
     Inquirer Magazine, April 25, 1999

     I   was   expecting   a  wild  hair,  clanking  jewelry,  a
     tatterdemalion  velvet  cape  from  whose  folds wafted the
     scent  of incense, a house full of candles, dream catchers,
     cats, and bad art.
     --David Rakoff, [2]Fraud

     To my ear, though, the prose has the tatterdemalion feel of
     something  hooked  together  by  commas, tacked together by
     periods.
     --Brad  Leithauser,"Capturer of Hearts," [3]New York Times,
     April 7, 1996
     _________________________________________________________

   Tatterdemalion  derives  from  tatter  + -demalion, of unknown
   origin, though perhaps from Old French maillon, "long clothes,
   swadding clothes" or Italian maglia, "undershirt."

References

   1. http://www.phillynews.com/sunmag/index.shtml
   2. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/038550084X/lexico
   3. http://www.nytimes.com/


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