bedraggled
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
- unbedraggled adjective
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.
Our fellow travelers along the I-95 corridor comprised a particularly vibrant cross-section of American society, including many bedraggled participants of Daytona’s Bike Week, trailering their baggers and dressers home.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 4, 2026
But on what criteria, using what metrics, should the bedraggled managers—who have never had to do this before—make the trade-offs now?
From Slate • Nov. 8, 2025
The final scoreline almost did a kindness to a bedraggled Inter, such was PSG's dominance and the sheer number of chances they created.
From BBC • May 31, 2025
Every wrinkly finger, bedraggled wig and lipstick-smeared visage are a sight to behold.
From Salon • Feb. 28, 2025
As I fiddled with it, there was the singing rustle of nylon from without and two young women entered, blinking and bedraggled.
From "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson
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.
