bedraggled

English

WOTD – 22 February 2017

a Himalayan cat looking bedraggled (sense 1) after being bathed

Etymology

From bedraggle +‎ -ed.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /bɪˈdɹæɡl̩d/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: be‧drag‧gled

Adjective

bedraggled (comparative more bedraggled, superlative most bedraggled)

1. Wet and limp; unkempt.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:unkempt

   • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “The Chase.—Third Day.”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 627:

     A low rumbling sound was heard; a subterraneous hum; and then all held their breaths; as bedraggled with trailing ropes, and harpoons, and lances, a vast form shot lengthwise, but obliquely from the sea.

   • 1880, Mark Twain [pseudonym] (Samuel L[anghorne] Clemens), chapter XLVI, in A Tramp Abroad; […], Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company; London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC, pages 532 and 535:

     She came at night, and in a storm, with only two attendants, and stood before a peasant’s hut, tired, bedraggled, soaked with rain, “the red print of her lost crown still girdling her brow,” and implored admittance—and was refused!

   • 1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, chapter XIV, in The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:

     No three tramps that one could have met in a Surrey lane could have looked more hopeless and bedraggled.

   • 1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter XXVIII, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], →OCLC:

     As a rule he was neat in his person, but now his clothes were in disorder. He looked suddenly bedraggled. I was convinced he had been drinking, and I smiled.

   • 2003, The New Yorker, page 17:

     Finally delivering “Room on Fire,” the follow-up to their much ballyhooed debut album, the well-heeled but stylishly bedraggled locals try to dispel accusations of one-trick-ponyism.

2. Decaying, decrepit or dilapidated.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:ramshackle

   • 1919, Saki [pseudonym; Hector Hugh Munro], “The Occasional Garden”, in R[othay] R[eynolds], editor, The Toys of Peace and Other Papers. […], London: John Lane, The Bodley Head […], →OCLC, page 239:

     She is only coming to gloat over my bedraggled and flowerless borders and to sing the praises of her own detestably over-cultivated garden. I'm sick of being told that it's the envy of the neighbourhood; it's like everything else that belongs to her—her car, her dinner-parties, even her headaches, they are all superlative; no one else ever had anything like them.

   • 1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter XI, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], →OCLC:

     It was a tall, shabby building, that cannot have been painted for years, and it had so bedraggled an air that the houses on each side of it looked neat and clean.

Derived terms

• bedraggledly
• bedraggledness
• unbedraggled

Related terms

• bedraggle
• draggled
• draggle-tail
• draggle-tailed

Translations

unkempt

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 全身湿透的, 满身泥污的

• Czech: urousaný, umolousaný
• Dutch: onverzorgd (nl)
• German: ungepflegt (de), verdreckt (de)
• Greek: ατημέλητος (el) (atimélitos)
• Hungarian: ápolatlan (hu)
• Irish: aimlithe, draoibeáilte, giobach, sraoilleach, úcaiste, útamáilte
• Maori: hūtotoi, hūtoitoi
• Plautdietsch: bekjwiemt

decaying, dilapidated

• Dutch: bouwvallig (nl), onderkomen (nl)
• French: débraillé (fr)
• German: baufällig (de), heruntergekommen (de)
• Hungarian: elhanyagolt (hu)

Verb

bedraggled

1. simple past and past participle of bedraggle.