What's the difference between bedraggled and ragtag?
Bedraggled
Definition:
(imp. & p. p.) of Bedraggle
Example Sentences:
(1) So that you know he's evil, he is dressed like a giant, bedraggled grey duckling, in a fur coat made up of bits of chewed-up wolf.
(2) He was flanked by a triumvirate of aides, the excitable and matronly chief usher, a man at a computer screen who looked like a bedraggled version of Prince William, and a shaven-headed man who did absolutely nothing all day except fall asleep midway through the morning session.
(3) At the base gates an American sentry, suspicious of the bedraggled Afghan, yelled at him to stop.
(4) Among those who finally decided that Kobani was on the brink was Mukdad Bozan, travelling with his wife, a wailing baby and three bedraggled older children.
(5) A telling paragraph in the club’s accounts reads: “The directors believe the company is not at risk with its strong financial position, no borrowings, an increased turnover and a modern fit-for-purpose stadium to play in.” Yet Blackpool’s healthy financial position is at odds with their performance on the pitch – a pitch, incidentally, that has not been relaid since the summer of 2013 and would shame even the most bedraggled of municipal surfaces.
(6) McMahon passed that on to his England team-mates, who figured they'd be lining out the next day against a band of bedraggled buffoons.
(7) Nearby, two clerks from India's ministry of women and child welfare wheel piles of brown, bedraggled office files on swivel chairs toward a waiting van bound for the central records office.
(8) Others still hold out hope of moving northwards, with a group of bedraggled asylum-seekers dressed in oversized anoraks holding up a German flag on Wednesday, signalling that they still hoped to get to Germany.
(9) We’ve got a point, we will carry on working tomorrow and I’m sure that if we apply ourselves as we did in the second half we will get more points.” That may turn out to be true, but much of the fans’ frustrations here stemmed from the fact that Rayo appeared far more alert than their bedraggled hosts from the start; with just two minutes gone the left-back Nacho volleyed at goal and forced a corner.
(10) The role requires a substantial downgrading of Cotillard's natural glamour – Sandra is rake thin and washed out, emotionally bedraggled and popping Xanax.
(11) They could have led by the required scoreline at half-time, such was the pace, power and penetration of their game and so bedraggled were Galatasaray.
(12) We must look a bedraggled mess when we arrive because lovely owners Elena and Roberto rush to dry us and warm us up, show us our cosy larch-floored room and give us drinks, and even the keys to their car, so that we can drive to the nearest restaurant still open, in Alagna.
(13) With two goals in Sunday's demonstrative romp-and-stomp over StubHub Center tenant Chivas USA (nobody really calls this a "rivalry" anymore … not even the priciest PR firm could spin it thusly considering Chivas' bedraggled state) Donovan has matched Jeff Cunningham's all-time mark of 134 league goals.
(14) They have become ideal opposition for those in need of a win, whether a bedraggled Chelsea last Saturday or a besieged Manuel Pellegrini.
(15) Gunfire and shelling had tailed off in Debaltseve by Thursday morning, after thousands of Kiev’s forces made a bedraggled, dangerous retreat from its bombed-out streets.
(16) As Worthy Farm's usual residents – 350 dairy cows – were set to replace Glastonbury's 170,000 bedraggled festival-goers, Eavis cannily set the rumour mill rolling for next year's headliners.
(17) Sadly, what we are likely to see in the red box is a few bedraggled rabbits offering pre-election gimmicks and the chance to drown our sorrows for a few pennies less this year.
(18) You can merely choose between wearing something protective and becoming soaked in sweat from the inside, or something cool and becoming bedraggled in the traditional manner by the precipitation outside.
(19) The sight of so many Uncle Sams, Statues of Liberty and Captain Americas traipsing the last few miles of dual-carriageway hard-shoulder like bedraggled refugees should make Fifa question their criteria for stadium allocation (it won’t).
(20) Inside the ceremony at a university sports hall in the New England university town of Durham a clergyman intervened to denounce gays in lubricious detail, while outside a bedraggled group of demonstrators waved banners warning "Fags Doom Nations".
Ragtag
Definition:
Example Sentences:
(1) To Popovich's credit, the ragtag group of roleplayers and benchwarmers almost pulled off a victory.
(2) In addition to the huge number of different groups fighting on the Ukrainian side, there is also a ragtag assortment of people fighting for the separatists – a mixture of Cossack militias and others from Russia who may have links with Russian intelligence, people representing local business and criminal interests, and ideologically motivated locals who genuinely believe in the cause.
(3) Based on Robert Edsel's book, The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes , the film focuses on the ragtag group of Americans, played by Clooney, Damon, Murray, Goodman and Bob Balaban, one Brit (Hugh Bonneville – Heslov is a big fan of Downton Abbey) and one Frenchman (Jean Dujardin, who is sweet in the film, even if he clearly only understood about one English word in every five of his lines) who were formed to try to save some of the great works of European art and architecture from being destroyed and pillaged during the second world war.
(4) Something is bubbling under the surface and the ragtag platoon of Ukip activists in Somerset say they feel it too.
(5) That’s where the ragtag bunch of 30 volunteers comes in.
(6) In the centre of town, pockets of armed men in ragtag military gear as well as larger groups of unarmed men congregated.
(7) Coke's critics are largely a ragtag bunch but the company has been unable to drown out the background noise, despite an annual marketing budget of $2bn.
(8) Its ragtag forces, including a high proportion of press-ganged and brutalised children, became notorious for abduction, gang rape and summary execution.
(9) This body is populated by a motley collection of amateurs; leftovers from a bygone age, when Ukip was a ragtag band of volunteers on the fringes of British politics.
(10) But for the first time in the quarter-century since global warming became a major public issue the advantage in this struggle has begun to tilt away from the Exxons and the BPs and towards the ragtag and spread-out fossil fuel resistance, which is led by indigenous people, young people, people breathing the impossible air in front-line communities.
(11) At the moment most of the interventions have been against softer targets – Saudi Arabia targeting guerrillas in Yemen; Egypt against Bedouin in Sinai; or strikes against ragtag armies in Libya.
(12) Even with better weapons and more training, they say, the rebels' ragtag forces are unlikely in the short term to be a match for Gaddafi's men.
(13) Clovis, a professor at Morningside College in Sioux City and occasional talk-radio host, has since been supplemented with a ragtag group of foreign policy advisers recently announced by the campaign, as well as by Stephen Miller, a longtime aide to Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, who at campaign rallies has accused Cruz of wanting to start a war with Russia.
(14) Now try to imagine for a moment the excitement of the Cuban people in 1959 when the charismatic barbudo, Fidel Castro, and his band of ragtag rebels managed to pull off the impossible: getting rid of the dictator Fulgencio Batista and ushering in – or so everyone expected – a new era in Cuba; a Cuba free of the corruption, violence and cronyism that had pockmarked its history since before its Wars of Independence, and radically divided the haves and the have-nots.
(15) But my fondest memory is of The Brass Band, a ragtag bunch of American players who performed classical music brilliantly and with no reverence at all.
(16) Lea says the Northern Territory’s struggle for political representation stretches back beyond 1978 to the start of the 20th century and a “ragtag bunch of mostly blokes” who fought hard – but that’s not what Territory Day is about today, she says.
(17) It’s beyond a place called Jalbire but we’ve heard trucks are being looted, so the villagers come to a prearranged spot: a ragtag bunch of old men and small boys who are thrilled to receive a few basic necessities – a tarpaulin each, a packet of biscuits, some thin foam to sleep on.
(18) Each features a larger-than-life warlord and ragtag followers kitted out in mix'n'match uniforms.
(19) The ragtag army can fight a war of attrition with the government, but with no leadership and no command structure, they are unable to organise a concentrated attack on its bases.
(20) Here, a ragtag gang of American soldiers (including C Thomas Howell!)