How to use bedraggled in a sentence

11 example sentences · adjective

Bedraggled means wet, limp, and unkempt; in disarray due to being doused with water, exposed to the elements, etc. Example: “No three tramps that one could have met in a Surrey lane could have looked more hopeless and bedraggled.”

Examples of bedraggled by meaning

adjectiveWet, limp, and unkempt; in disarray due to being doused with water, exposed to the elements, etc.

No three tramps that one could have met in a Surrey lane could have looked more hopeless and bedraggled.1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, chapter XIV, in The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC
He looked suddenly bedraggled.1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter XXVIII, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], →OCLC
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.2003, The New Yorker, page 17

adjectiveDecaying, decrepit or dilapidated.

She is only coming to gloat over my bedraggled and flowerless borders and to sing the praises of her own detestably over-cultivated garden.1919, Saki [pseudonym; Hector Hugh Munro], “The Occasional Garden”, in R[othay] R[eynolds], editor, The Toys of Peace and Other Papers....
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.1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter XI, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], →OCLC

More sentences with bedraggled

With a mortified hiss and yowl he clomped with bedraggled hauteur below decks.2003, June Kant, “Castaway”, in Jan Fook, Susan Hawthorne, Renate Klein, editors, Cat Tales: The Meaning of Cats in Women's Lives, North…. From the entry clomp
"I was," she said, "but I didn’t stay." Her nose was shiny and her hair was bedraggled.1976, Isaac Asimov, Murder at the ABA. From the entry niminy-piminy
"Looks like a bedraggled old tart," says Madame.[1948, Joseph Stilwell, edited by Theodore H. White, The Stilwell Papers, Schocken Books, published 1972, →LCCN, →OCLC, →OL, page 146. From the entry Ti-hua
So when we first “dog-napped” the bedraggled border collie, inappropriately named "Diamond," we were intent on finding him a good home with some deserving family.2014, Wanda L. Johnson, Diamonds in the Ruff, page 1. From the entry dog-nap
She began walking toward Seventh Avenue, carrying her valise, which now felt like it weighed about fifty pounds, and pulling the bedraggled rollerboard suitcase behind her.2008, Candace Bushnell, Lipstick Jungle TV Tie-In. From the entry rollerboard
The Skell was dripping on the cold stones of the terrace, bedraggled like a seamonster – Fisher had the impression of air escaping from the Skell’s body.1986, Paul Theroux, O-Zone, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, published 1987, →ISBN, page 127. From the entry seamonster

Meaning of bedraggled

adjective Wet, limp, and unkempt; in disarray due to being doused with water, exposed to the elements, etc.
adjective Decaying, decrepit or dilapidated.

Full definition of bedraggled

Questions about bedraggled in a sentence

How do you use bedraggled in a sentence?: Bedraggled is used as an adjective. For example: “No three tramps that one could have met in a Surrey lane could have looked more hopeless and bedraggled.”
What is a short sentence with bedraggled?: “He looked suddenly bedraggled.”
What does bedraggled mean?: Bedraggled means wet, limp, and unkempt; in disarray due to being doused with water, exposed to the elements, etc.

Adapted from Wiktionary: bedraggled (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this page: “How to use bedraggled in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/bedraggled. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.