Definition of "scalawag"

scalawag

noun
plural scalawags
1. (derogatory) A disreputable fellow, a good-for-nothing, a scapegrace, a blackguard.
2. (informal) A badly-behaved person, especially a child; a mischief-maker; a rascal.
3. (derogatory, archaic) A scrawny cow.
4. (derogatory, US, archaic or historical) Any white Southerner who supported the federal plan of Reconstruction after the American Civil War or who joined with the black freedmen and the carpetbaggers in support of Republican Party policies.
  Quotations
  “And you, Hugh Elsing, I’m ashamed of you! What will your poor mother say? Drunk and out with a—a Yankee-loving Scallawag like Captain Butler! […] ”
  1936 June 30, Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; republished New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, 1944, part IV, page 803