Draggled and Sheveled

Standing in my mother’s garden on a wet September day, rain taps on the canvas of my wide-brimmed hat.  The falling rain blurs the scene, flattering the old roses and clematis drooping from their trellises, their pale faces freckled beige by age and damp, their petals unfurling under the weight of raindrops.  I remember their June colours, as fresh as off the tips of paintbrushes, their faces smiling up at a sun, welcoming business-like honey bees and waif-like white butterflies into their petaled parlours. 

Rather than the rhythmic pattering and dripping on leaves and bent heads, I imagine the humming and thrumming of insects, the trilling and twittering of birds as they invite and warn, seduce and scold, while the pungency of wet earth mixing with thyme and mint is replaced in my mind by petrichor, roses and lilac. 

Although bedraggled and disheveled today, there is as much beauty in this faded garden as there is in my memory of it in its younger days. 

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When I wrote the above metaphor for age and youth, I started with the words bedraggled and disheveled.  ‘Bedraggled’ seemed the perfect word as its etymology derives from an old real word ‘draggle’:  to soil or wet by dragging in dirt or mud that has been rained upon.  Then I wondered about other words in English like bedraggled that are only used in the negative.

Here are 10 odd-looking English un-words.  Add a negative prefix to these non-existent positives and see what words appear!

1. Consolate
2. Draggled
3. Effable
4. Flappable
5. Gainly
6. Jected
7. Petuous
8. Shevelled
9. Sidious
10. Wieldy