(A). He's a regular rip. A rip of a fellow. A precious rip. Applied to children, means one who rips or tears his clothes by boisterous play, carelessness, or indifference. Anglo-Saxon ryp[an], to spoil, to tear, to break in pieces.
“Some forlorn, worn-out old rips, broken-kneed and broken-winded.” —Du Maurier: Peter Ibbetson, part vi. p. 376.
To rip up old grievances or sores. To bring them again to recollection, to recall them. The allusion is to breaking up a place in search of something hidden and out of sight. (Anglo-Saxon.)
“They ripped up all that had been done from the beginning of the Rebellion.” —Clarendon.
Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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