in rags vs shabby

in rags

prep
  • Very poor or lowly. 

  • Dressed in very old, torn clothes. 

shabby

adj
  • Wearing ragged, very worn, or dirty clothing. 

  • Mean; despicable. 

  • Torn or worn; unkempt. 

  • Poor; showing little effort or talent. 

How often have the words in rags and shabby occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )