(of a person or other animal, or of clothing) Slatternly, untidy, unkempt.
1830, William Hazlitt, Conversations of James Northcote, Esq., R.A., London: Henry Colburn & Richard Bentley, “Conversation the Fourth,” p. 51,
Every thing of that sort appears to be at present no better than it is with us in a country-town: or rather it wants the simplicity and rustic innocence, and is more like the draggled-tailed finery of a lady’s waiting-maid.
1840, Walt Whitman, letter to Abraham P. Leech dated 11 August, 1840, in Ted Genoways (ed.), Walt Whitman: The Correspondence, Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2004, Volume 7, p. 3,
[…] probably all the whig enthusiasm generated on that occasion was melted down again by this unlucky shower, for we passed loads of forlorn gentlemen, with draggle-tailed coats, crest-fallen hats, and sour-looking phizzes. — The mighty patriotism they felt was drowned by a tormenting slipperiness of coat, shirt, and pantaloons.
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