About ”bedraggled” - for native speakers of English
Oxford dictionary defines ”bedraggled” as ”dishevelled” (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/bedraggled). Other dictionaries define it as ”wet or dirty from being in rain or mud”. This is of course a kind of dishevelment, but to me dishevelled has more to do with being disordered than being wet or dirty. What do you think? Does bedraggled simply mean dishevelled?
Perhaps one could say that bedraggled means "dishevelled in a wet or dirty way"?

Thanks for your help!

Question

About ”bedraggled” - for native speakers of English
Oxford dictionary defines ”bedraggled” as ”dishevelled” (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/bedraggled). Other dictionaries define it as ”wet or dirty from being in rain or mud”. This is of course a kind of dishevelment, but to me dishevelled has more to do with being disordered than being wet or dirty. What do you think? Does bedraggled simply mean dishevelled?
Perhaps one could say that bedraggled means "dishevelled in a wet or dirty way"?

Thanks for your help!

Answer

Now that you have prompted me to think about it, I guess that "dishevelled in a wet way" is how I would put it, and not so much dirty.

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I would use the word in the same way as Gary.  I saw Oxford's example sentences and perhaps we have recently started using this word in a narrower way than originally.

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Thanks Dagmar. I will keep in mind that if I say "bedraggled" it won't necessarily mean "wet" to a native speaker.

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Native English speaker here in the USA. I've always used the two interchangeably and had no idea bedraggled had such a precise meaning. Very cool.

Perhaps the Brits or the Aussies honor the nuance.