bedraggled
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of bedraggled
Explanation
If you're bedraggled, you're dishevelled, limp, and tired. Many people are a bit bedraggled after a very long plane flight. New parents who spend much of the night awake with a crying baby often look a little bedraggled, and so do travelers and students during finals week. Bedraggled people haven't gotten enough sleep and aren't quite as pulled together and polished as they might like to be. Bedraggled is an 18th-century word, from the now-obsolete verb bedraggle, combining be and draggle, "make wet and dirty" or "lag behind."
Vocabulary lists containing bedraggled
Surviving Hitler
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Raining Cats and Dogs
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Uglies
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Bedraggled and bleeding, he opens his eyes to find Anna ministering to him and is rhapsodically smitten.
From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 14, 2025
Trope: Man on desert island: Bedraggled castaway is playing solitaire.
From Washington Post • Jan. 21, 2021
Bedraggled and abused as they are, our downtowns do work.
From Time Magazine Archive
Bedraggled and blear-eyed, they ambled off belching LVTs to the consternation of whitebanded "umpires" who frantically waved yellow flags to simulate a mortar and grenade attack.
From Time Magazine Archive
Bedraggled, in dirty party clothes, her hair stuck to her fece, she was still stunning.
From "Uglies" by Scott Westerfeld
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
