draggled

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drag·gle

(drăg′əl)

v. drag·gled, drag·gling, drag·gles

v.tr.

To make wet and dirty by dragging on the ground.

v.intr.

1. To become wet and muddy by being dragged.

2. To follow slowly; straggle.

[ Probably frequentative of drag.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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Adj.

draggled - limp and soiled as if dragged in the mud; "the beggar's bedraggled clothes"; "scarecrows in battered hats or draggled skirts"

bedraggled

dirty, soiled, unclean - soiled or likely to soil with dirt or grime; "dirty unswept sidewalks"; "a child in dirty overalls"; "dirty slums"; "piles of dirty dishes"; "put his dirty feet on the clean sheet"; "wore an unclean shirt"; "mining is a dirty job"; "Cinderella did the dirty work while her sisters preened themselves"

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References in classic literature ?

A draggled muslin cap on his head and a dirty gunny-sack about his slim hips proclaimed him cook of the decidedly dirty ship's galley in which I found myself.

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They were indeed a queer-looking party that assembled on the bank--the birds with draggled feathers, the animals with their fur clinging close to them, and all dripping wet, cross, and uncomfortable.

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Not a single idea could I connect with any given object, while, in addition, my appearance was so draggled that I felt utterly ashamed of it.

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His handsome coat was draggled. The broad pads of his feet were bruised and bleeding.

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She came home dirty, draggled, and shoeless; she had walked for a whole week without shoes; she had slept in the fields, and caught a terrible cold; her feet were swollen and sore, and her hands torn and scratched all over.

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Her touch enabled her to recognize them in a moment, and to discover if a single feather were crippled or draggled. She handled their crops, and knew what they had eaten, and if too little or too much; her face enacting a vivid pantomime of the criticisms passing in her mind.

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Being a light-complexioned woman, she wore light clothes, as most blondes will, and appeared, in preference, in draggled sea-green, or slatternly sky-blue.

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"Surely I shall never miss it," I said, and I had in mind the dark gray suit with the pockets draggled from the freightage of many books--books that had spoiled more than one day's fishing sport.

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Therefore never regard so piteously thy tail; it will undoubtedly be draggled in the mud, and for this there is no help.

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As for color, if a once black cat had been well and thoroughly singed the result would have resembled the hue of this waif's thin, draggled, unsightly fur.

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"Don't see how two draggled skirts and a stained waist can be transformed into a whole rig," said Fan, sitting on the bed, with her garments strewn about her in various attitudes of limp despondency.

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Three servants of the castle lay dead beside them, all torn and draggled, as though a pack of wolves had been upon them.