Ragged

How to spell ragged

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce ragged

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ragged mean?

1. adjectiveWorn into tatters, frayed, or having a rough, uneven edge.

Ragged in a sentence

• The charity collected ragged coats and mended them for the winter.

• A ragged line of cliffs marked the edge of the bay.

Where does ragged come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

Ragged grew out of the noun 'rag', meaning a torn or worn-out scrap of cloth, which English took from a Scandinavian source closely related to Old Norse 'rogg', describing a tuft or shaggy strip of fur or wool. By the 1300s English had formed the adjective 'ragged' to describe anything as rough, frayed, or torn as old cloth, and the meaning soon stretched to jagged outlines like a ragged coastline or a ragged edge of rock. The pronunciation is the spelling trap here: although it is built from a single-syllable word, the adjective is sounded as two syllables, 'RAG-id', a survival of older English where the '-ed' ending was pronounced in full. That same two-syllable pattern appears in relatives like 'rugged' and 'jagged', all sharing a rough, broken-edged feel. The notion of poverty and tatters, as in a ragged beggar, has clung to the word since medieval times.

How the word is built

• rag (worn cloth, tatter)
• -ed (adjective suffix forming 'having the quality of')