Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a worthless person.

1897		‘Mark Twain’ Tom Sawyer, Detective 75: Now who ever had anything agin that poor trifling no-account?
1912		Day Book (Chicago) 7 Dec. 24/1: He was what the old folks call ‘no account’.
1921		P. & T. Casey Gay-cat 107: ‘Which of the two no-accounts do yer mean?’ asked the Frisco Kid.
1928		C. McKay Home to Harlem 215: I had to quit her or she would have made me either a no-’count or a bad nigger.
1934		H. Miller Tropic of Cancer (1963) 77: Imagine these bloody no-accounts going home from the concert with blood on their dickies!
1951		Green & Laurie Show Biz from Vaude to Video 37: The standard formula of colored acts – the chicken-stealing, crap-shootin’, gin-guzzlin’, razor-totin’, no-account.
1968		T. Wolfe Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1969) 237: Jerry Garcia [...] who used to live in the Chateau in Palo Alto with Page Browning and other seeming no-counts.
1978		S. King Stand (1990) 183: Most of those no-accounts out on Barker Road.
1992		D. Pinckney High Cotton (1993) 140: I would come to no good among the no accounts, burrheads, shines, smokes, charcoals, dinges, coons, monkeys, jungle bunnies, jigaboos, spagingy-spagades, moleskins, California rollers, Murphy dogs, and diamond switchers.