bedraggle \bih-DRAG-uhl\,
verb:
to make limp and soiled, as with rain or dirt.
The lane was long and soused and dark that led to the house I helped to fill and bedraggle.
-- Dylan Thomas, "The Crumbs of One Man's Year," The Collected Stories of Dylan Thomas, first published in 1946
Here in town, she probably preferred to tread the extent of the two drawing-rooms, and measure out the miles by spaces of forty feet, rather than bedraggle her skirts over the sloppy pavements.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Blithedale Romance," 1852
Bedraggle comes from the word draggle, which is a diminutive form of drag. It entered English in the 1700s.
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