rag

be on the rag be menstruating. informal, chiefly North American

☞ The expression is based on rag in the sense 'sanitary towel'.

chew the rag: see chew the fat atfat.

(from) rags to riches used to describe a person's rise from a state of extreme poverty to one of great wealth.

2000Imogen Edwards-JonesMy Canapé Hell Much was made of his East End roots, his chance discovery on Oxford Street. He was truly a modern day tale of rags to riches.

in your glad rags: seeglad.

lose your rag lose your temper. informal

2004Sarah HallThe Electric Michelangelo Occasionally Cy lost his rag, and yelled at her to shut up.

part brass rags with quarrel and break off a friendship with.

☞ This expression is explained in W. P. Drury's short story The Tadpole of an Archangel (1898): 'When [sailors] desire to prove the brotherly love…with which each inspires the other, it is their…custom to keep their brasswork cleaning rags in a joint ragbag. But should relations…become strained between them, the bag owner casts forth upon the deck…his sometime brother's rags; and with the parting of the brassrags hostilities begin'. The phrase originated as late 19th-century nautical slang.

rag, tag, and bobtail a group of people perceived as disreputable or undesirable.

☞ A bobtail is a horse or dog with a docked tail, while rag and tag both express the idea of 'tattered clothes': the phrase literally means 'people in ragged clothes together with their dogs and horses'. The forms tag, rag, and bobtail, ragtag and bobtail, and tagrag and bobtail are also found.

a red rag to a bull: seered.

take the rag off the bush (or hedge) surpass everything or everyone. chiefly US