Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Wet; limp.
- adj. Soiled by or as if by having been dragged through mud.
- adj. Being in a condition of deterioration; dilapidated: a street of bedraggled tenements.
Wiktionary
- adj. wet and limp; unkempt
- adj. decaying, decrepit or dilapidated
- v. Simple past tense and past participle of bedraggle.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. in deplorable condition
- adj. limp and soiled as if dragged in the mud
Examples
“If you look up the word bedraggled in the dictionary, there will be an image of my 4 rain soaked scrawny birds, standing on one foot, so close together they look attached.”
“Every time I saw her getting homelier and kind of bedraggled like, I said to myself, well, I've saved Peter from that at any rate.”
“The Irish News was quick to replace the loss of Susan McKay with the equally impressive columnist, Fionnuala O'Connor, author of 'first article, she examines the possible repercussions of the British Conservative Party's link-up with the' bedraggled 'link of Unionism, Reg Empey's Ulster Unionist Party, under the bizarre UCUNF label.”
“I know there are some seniors who are kind of bedraggled and can't picture being vigorous enough to be Prez at 72, but there are an awful lot of seniors who resent the age jokes.”
“bedraggled" to make the story more clever and dramatic.”
“All across America's urban centers, the bedraggled hoi polloi have gathered around the comforting aura of reclaimed wood.”
“It is the cat that was once beautiful and is now like Lear, is bedraggled though majestic.”
The Huffington Post: James Scarborough: "Cats," Musical Theatre West
“NEW YORK -- Dominique Strauss-Kahn walked out of a Manhattan courthouse Tuesday free from criminal charges, sweeping with a smile past a crush of cameras and speeding away from a place where he'd been brought, bedraggled and handcuffed, more than three months ago.”
“I loved my look so much I have to admit I slept it and had a very bedraggled look the next day.”
The Huffington Post: BritChick Paris: Why Everyone and Anyone can be a Model
“But the insane exploit had a cost: The surviving forces were bedraggled and ill-fed.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘bedraggled’.
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mots justes
No true synonyms, no other word will do.
dysphemism, nyehre, conflate, onomatopœic, galumph, zeitgeist, mercenary, theomeny, git, snarky, sass, smarmy and 46 more...
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You're All Wet!
Wet words
dripping, soaked, flooded, drenched, plastered, flowing, wringing, torrential, h2o'd, splashed, skeezing, thirsted and 21 more...
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GCI
spinster, maiden, happy-go-lucky, homonym, ill-at-ease, saw red, out of sorts, hot under the collar, taken aback, pen-names, alias, shoelaces and 378 more...
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Twitter favourites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favourite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
bumwank, calamity, recalcitrant, gayenese, jeeze, nonsense, flabbergasted, juxtapose, procrastinating, ossanity, biffing, loser and 1972 more... -
ShuckFinn's Words
abecedarian, conflate, mondegreen, whit, truculent, downright, pugnacious, effluvium, canker, inveigle, obfuscate, melancholy and 227 more...
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strangelyrouge's Words
glockenspiel, gewgaw, jetsam, flotsam, gripe, grab, wench, whilst, betwixt, hither, thither, yonder and 1034 more...
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GRE Words
abjure, unswear, state, rescission, indemnification, ab, reny, abnegate, vitiated, vitiate, adumbrated, abash and 378 more...
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eggplantia5's Words
scintillate, marvel, cranberry, oscillate, triumph, bamboozle, grimace, magical, book, hexagon, cipher, compendium and 2727 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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words I love to use
kerfuffle, smarmy, sketchy, grim, wheedle, piffle, prattle, loggerheads, snarky, piddling, nix, caterwaul and 90 more...
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sionnach's Words
contumely, fomite, holmgang, poltroon, eleemosynary, obsidian, nugatory, grindcore, felch, recrudescent, pyx, parenteral and 3271 more...
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stpeter's Words
abase, abasement, abashed, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abhorrent, abide, abject, ablation, abnegation and 3536 more...
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Whatever Works (2009)
Words from 2009 'Whatever Works' film.
fault, racket, unto, flaw, fallacious, notion, decent, embalm, filch, delusion, delusions of gran..., grandeur and 135 more...
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Warp, Woof, Wimble
My favorite words.
prurient, locution, mondegreen, vaunted, lugubrious, larine, warp, woof, wimble, ineffable, pyknic, sodden and 114 more...
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sputnik
canoodle, span, hasten, discombobulate, sputnik, clod, encrusted, spit-shine, zeitgeist, landslide, laid, cherish and 350 more...
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5-0
Hecko, words! I’m so happy I’ve found you. I want to keep you all and never want to lose you again. I hope you like it here.
amscray, thistledown, tine, tinsel, pungent, snarl, wail, lanky, viscid, dawdle, luminous, stow and 2719 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for bedraggled.
rolig Thanks, Pro! It's interesting how some words are only used in certain contexts. Mar 28, 2013
Prolagus Hello to you!
You are right in that it means "drenched in sweat"; this particular word for "drenched", however, is hardly ever used in any context other than that of exhaustion. That's what I meant - it seems to incorporate both senses of bedraggled in the mind of an Italian reader. Mar 27, 2013
rolig Pro! First - Hi! It's been a long time.
Second: Is that any different from saying "drenched in sweat"?
Third: I always associate "bedraggled" with being wet, though being in a generally miserable-looking state is essential too. It would sound strange to me to say: "Gene Kelly was cheerfully bedraggled as he celebrated the joys of crooning in precipitation." Mar 27, 2013
Prolagus @Frog: madido di sudore! Mar 27, 2013
frogapplause @Pro. What a tease. You tell us there is a word in Italian that incorporates both exhaustion and sweat, then you don't share it. Mar 26, 2013
fbharjo B S & T (drag(gled) is the operative word.) Mar 26, 2013
yarb I like reesetee's "bed-raggled". I can well imagine how an intense twelve-hour sleep could raggle a person, top to bottom. Mar 26, 2013
Prolagus I'll go with something along the lines of "covered in sweat", then. There's an Italian word that incorporates both exhaustion and sweat. (Ew!)
Thanks! <3 Mar 26, 2013
ruzuzu Those definitions surprised me. In my mind it's definitely in the exhausted family--but exhausted the way a mouse is when a cat's been playing with it. Mar 26, 2013
Prolagus "Four bedraggled porters came through the door, each one staggering under a huge load. They hauled a collection of trunks and large canvas bags."
Given that there is no reference to the luggage being wet or soiled anywhere in the chapter, and that these are the porters of a moody and tyrannical woman, am I right in assuming the word is used to mean something like "exhausted/in poor conditions"? Or maybe "covered in sweat"? Mar 26, 2013
reesetee Ah, SoG, you think like I do. This scares me. Oct 14, 2007
sonofgroucho Who's to say your previous pronunciation is wrong? Oct 14, 2007
reesetee Talk about mispronouncing--when I was a kid, I thought this word was BED-raggled. I always wondered what raggling was and how a bed could do it to you. Oct 13, 2007
sonofgroucho Sounds like it should accompany bewitched, bothered and bewildered. Oct 13, 2007