Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Tattered, frayed, or torn.
  • adjective Dressed in tattered or threadbare clothes.
  • adjective Unkempt or shaggy.
  • adjective Having an irregular surface or edge; uneven or jagged in outline.
  • adjective Imperfect; uneven.
  • adjective Harsh; rasping.
  • adjective Exhausted or worn out.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Having a rough shaggy coat, as a horse or sheep; shaggy.
  • Rough, uneven, or rocky, as a sea-bottom.
  • Roughly broken, divided, or disordered; having disjointed parts, or a confusedly irregular surface or outline; jagged; craggy; ruggedly uneven or distorted: often used figuratively.
  • Rent or worn into rags or tatters; tattered; frayed: as, a ragged coat; ragged sails.
  • Wearing torn or frayed clothes; dressed in rags or tatters.
  • Shabby; ill-furnished.
  • In heraldry, same as raguly, especially of anything which is raguly on both sides. See ragged staff, below.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Rent or worn into tatters, or till the texture is broken
  • adjective Broken with rough edges; having jags; uneven; rough; jagged.
  • adjective rare Hence, harsh and disagreeable to the ear; dissonant.
  • adjective Wearing tattered clothes.
  • adjective Rough; shaggy; rugged.
  • adjective (Bot.) the fennel flower (Nigella Damascena).
  • adjective (Bot.) a plant of the genus Lychnis (Lychnis Flos-cuculi), cultivated for its handsome flowers, which have the petals cut into narrow lobes.
  • adjective (Bot.) prince's feather (Polygonum orientale).
  • adjective [Eng.] a free school for poor children, where they are taught and in part fed; -- a name given at first because they came in their common clothing.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb Simple past tense and past participle of rag.
  • adjective Rent or worn into tatters, or till the texture is broken.
  • adjective Broken with rough edges; having jags; uneven; rough; jagged.
  • adjective Hence, harsh and disagreeable to the ear; dissonant.
  • adjective Wearing tattered clothes.
  • adjective Rough; shaggy; rugged.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective worn out from stress or strain
  • adjective having an irregular outline
  • adjective being or dressed in clothes that are worn or torn

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from ragge, rag; see rag.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From rag

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