Wiktionary
adv. 1 dressed in very old, torn clothes 2 (by extension) very poor or lowly.
Usage examples of "in rags".
Then the worst came when I, being out of my mind with hunger and loss of my boys, and grief to see my husband and my little maids in rags and misery and despair, uttered a deep blasphemy—.
Hiram squalled, just before the huge cross, wrapped in rags and soaked in kerosene, was ignited.
Beggars dressed in rags and sores clung stubbornly to their territories, sleeping on the ground even on the coldest nights, lest some rival steal a profitable corner from them.
She was properly dressed in rags and shoddy boots, jigging in her eagerness to move along.
In one square a trio of beggars huddled by a public fountain, hands and faces wrapped in rags to protect themselves from the bitter cold.
Then the middle chambers blew up with a loud report, and in another moment the bridge had given way and the main bulk of the airship, like some grotesque cripple in rags, staggered, flapping and waving flambeaux to the crest of the Fall and hesitated there and vanished in a desperate suicidal leap.
But the leathery skin hung from them in rags, with yard-long rents from edge to bone.
She felt wild pain in her ribs as the brick of a foot covered in rags kicked her into a rolling skid.
He raised a shaking fist that was wrapped in rags because he would rather spend the money he got panhandling on booze than gloves.
Castles on the hilltops with people in satins and furs walking the courtyards, packs of men in armor on horseback, and people in rags plowing the fields!
One time I saved up five dollars to buy me a new rig-out, cos my best suit was all in rags, when Limpy Jim wanted me to play a game with him.
By the time this modicum of sunlight filtered down to the floor, it had spread out to a sourceless, uneven murk, out of which rose islands of pallid bodies clothed in rags and filth.