Bedraggled

I was an early reader and a voracious reader. I think I read Jane Eyre before I could walk. (No, not really.) The upside of being such a young, book-devouring person is that you develop a lifelong love affair with reading. The downside (other than this one) is that when you're that young, some words don't get imprinted on your brain with the correct pronunciation. You catch the meaning of the word, in context, but the pronunciation escapes you. Witness: bedraggled. Bedraggled, of course, means disheveled or unkempt. And it's pronounced... well, look it up yourselves! I don't have the ability to reproduce that funky upside-down "e" that I'd need to type the pronunciation. But, as a youngster, I thought that it certainly was pronounced like "bed raggled." As in, "I look a mess this morning-- my bed really raggled me!" (Which, if you've seen me in the mornings, you'd know that it looks like my bed really did raggle me-- whatever "to raggle" means.)