Shakespeare in fact used the singular form of the word: "What too curious dreg espies my sweet lady in the fountain of our love?" (Troilus and Cressida). And many other writers since then have used dreg:"but one dreg of shame" - Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre"if you have not a dreg of passion in you" - John Buchan, Salute to Adventurers"a brandy bottle with only a dreg of spirit in it" - Rider Haggard, Finished"Every atom and dreg of it!" - Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure"shyly ate their apple-sauce to the last dreg" - Sinclair Lewis, The InnocentsAnd it continues to be used, generally in a figurative sense. For example, a 1992 biography of Dustin Hoffman, by Ronald Bergan: "His main companion is the pathetic dreg of society, Ratso Rizzo." And Enoch Powell in Reflections of a Statesman: "Grenada was the last tiny but bitter dreg in the constitutional cup which the United Kingdom has drained in the past thirty-five years".