rag·ged

(răg′ĭd)

adj.

1. Tattered, frayed, or torn: ragged clothes.

2. Dressed in tattered or threadbare clothes: a ragged scarecrow.

3. Unkempt or shaggy: ragged hair.

4. Having an irregular surface or edge; uneven or jagged in outline: a column of text set with a ragged right margin.

5. Imperfect; uneven: The actor gave a ragged performance.

6. Harsh; rasping: a ragged cough.

7. Exhausted or worn out: Don't run yourself ragged preparing for the holidays.

[Middle English, from ragge, rag; see rag¹.]

rag′ged·ly adv.

rag′ged·ness n.

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.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun	1.	raggedness - a texture of a surface or edge that is not smooth but is irregular and uneven roughness texture - the feel of a surface or a fabric; "the wall had a smooth texture" scaliness - the property of being scaly nubbiness, tweediness, coarseness - looseness or roughness in texture (as of cloth) slub, burl, knot - soft lump or unevenness in a yarn; either an imperfection or created by design abrasiveness, harshness, scratchiness - the roughness of a substance that causes abrasions graininess, granularity, coarseness - the quality of being composed of relatively large particles shagginess - roughness of nap produced by long woolly hairs bumpiness - the texture of a surface that has many bumps bristliness, prickliness, spininess, thorniness - the quality of being covered with prickly thorns or spines
	2.	raggedness - shabbiness by virtue of being in rags manginess, seediness, shabbiness, sleaziness - a lack of elegance as a consequence of wearing threadbare or dirty clothing

Translations

خُشونَه، كَوْن الثِياب رثَّه

chatrnostdrsnost

roderiujævnhed

Zerlumptheit

rugosité

niîurnísla, grófleiki

hrboľatosťotrhanosť

hırpanîlik

破烂粗糙度

rag

(rӕg) noun

a piece of old, torn or worn cloth. I'll polish my bike with this old rag.

ˈragged (ˈrӕgid) adjective

1. dressed in old, worn or torn clothing. a ragged beggar.

2. torn. ragged clothes.

3. rough or uneven; not straight or smooth. a ragged edge.

ˈraggedly adverb

ˈraggedness noun

rags noun plural

old, worn or torn clothes. The beggar was dressed in rags.

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

his hum- ble subjects hunger and thirst for words of wisdom out of the mouth of their master his Serene and Sacred Raggedness!"

View in context

Of all the beggar-men that I had seen or fancied, he was the chief for raggedness. He was clothed with tatters of old ship's canvas and old sea-cloth, and this extraordinary patchwork was all held together by a system of the most various and incongruous fastenings, brass buttons, bits of stick, and loops of tarry gaskin.

View in context

She wore every day the same ugly brown dress, with the mud of the last wet day still caked on the hem and with the raggedness, which Philip had noticed the first time he saw her, still unmended.

View in context

The perspective of one of these narrow cracks of streets, with its rows of tall houses stretching away till they come together in the distance like railway tracks; its clothes-lines crossing over at all altitudes and waving their bannered raggedness over the swarms of people below; and the white-dressed women perched in balcony railings all the way from the pavement up to the heavens--a perspective like that is really worth going into Neapolitan details to see.

View in context

A blurred circle of yellow haze had risen up in the sky in lieu of sun, and he had watched the patch it put upon his wall, like a bit of the prison's raggedness. He had heard the gates open; and the badly shod feet that waited outside shuffle in; and the sweeping, and pumping, and moving about, begin, which commenced the prison morning.

View in context

The beauty of Motherland lies in its embrace of the raggedness of relationships and in its candid acknowledgment that sometimes resolution and reconciliation simply elude us.

Motherland

That would certainly account for the raggedness around and on the greens.

Aching Tiger looking long in the tooth; FATHER TIME & INJURIES CATCHING UP WITH ME SAYS WOODS

However, the p-values of the sum of square deviation (SSD = 0.01901 [+ or -] 0.009; p = 0.375) and raggedness index (r = 0.1564 [+ or -] 0.039; p = 0.318) tests were not significant.

Variations in mitochondrial cytochrome b region among Ethiopian indigenous cattle populations assert Bos taurus maternal origin and historical dynamics

Derridean Differance can be applied to Albee's plays as it reveals the incongruities, shabbiness and raggedness of American society.

Differance, Erasure and Edward Albee's The American Dream (1961)

Yet that period of complete raggedness had symbolism, it had significance.

Manchester City had their core weakness exposed by Liverpool but it won't alter the course of this campaign; The Invincibles-elect were in tatters for little more than twenty or so minutes and the Reds made them pay

In the past, dreadlocks were associated with raggedness, madness and criminal habits.

Once shunned as the reserve of crooks, dreadlocks are now the in-thing