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.
A massive invasion force that Xerxes has led against Greece has just been destroyed; we watch as news of the disaster arrives, followed by the bedraggled monarch himself.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 6, 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
"There's always people looking a little bedraggled who just want something filling and probably with a vegetable in it," Ayesha Kalaji, from restaurant Queen of Cups said.
From BBC • Jun. 25, 2025
After honing his comedic chops in the booth and on Carson's couch, Uecker broke into Hollywood as the fictional play-by-play man for the bedraggled Cleveland Indians in the "Major League" movies.
From Salon • Jan. 16, 2025
Beside him was an ancient and bedraggled donkey, who did not get up and may have been dead.
From "The Many Assassinations of Samir, the Seller of Dreams" by Daniel Nayeri
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.
