haggard

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈhæɡ.əd/
• (US) enPR: hăg-ərd' IPA^(key): /ˈhæɡ.ɚd/

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• Rhymes: -æɡə(ɹ)d

From Middle French haggard, from Old French faulcon hagard (“wild falcon”) ( > French hagard (“dazed”)), from Middle High German hag (“coppice”) [1] ( > archaic German Hag (“hedge, grove”)). Akin to Frankish *hagia ( > French haie (“hedge”))[2]

haggard (comparative more haggard, superlative most haggard)

1. Looking exhausted, worried, or poor in condition

   Pale and haggard faces.

   A gradual descent into a haggard and feeble state.

   The years of hardship made her look somewhat haggard.

   • 1685, John Dryden, The Despairing Lover:

     Staring his eyes, and haggard was his look.

   • 1851 April 9, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables, a Romance, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields:

     Then there was a pale, care-wrinkled woman, not old, but haggard, and already with streaks of gray among her hair, like silver ribbons; one of those women, naturally delicate, whom you at once recognize as worn to death by a brute—probably, a drunken brute—of a husband, and at least nine children.

   • 1976, Joni Mitchell (lyrics and music), “Black Crow”, in Hejira:

     I looked at the morning / After being up all night / I looked at my haggard face in the bathroom light / I looked out the window / And I saw that ragged soul take flight

   • 1986, John le Carré, A Perfect Spy:

     By the end of two weeks there isn't a county in England where he hasn't pledged his holiness six different ways — which is not to deny that intermittently he has visions of himself as a haggard apostle of the life renounced, converting beautiful women and millionaires to Christian poverty.

2. (of an animal) Wild or untamed

   a haggard or refractory hawk

• haggardly
• haggardness

haggard (plural haggards)

1. (falconry) A hunting bird captured as an adult.
   • 1598–1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “Much Adoe about Nothing”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i]:

     No, truly, Ursula, she is too disdainful;
     I know her spirits are as coy and wild
     As haggards of the rock.

   • 1856, John Henry Walsh, Manual of British Rural Sports

     HAGGARDS may be trapped in this country but with the square-net, or the bow-net, but in either case great difficulty is experienced

2. (falconry) A young or untrained hawk or falcon.
3. (obsolete) A fierce, intractable creature.
   • c. 1590–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Taming of the Shrew”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene ii]:

     I have loved this proud disdainful haggard.

4. (obsolete) A hag.
   • 1699, Samuel Garth, The Dispensary:

     In a dark Grott the baleful Haggard lay,
     Breathing black Vengeance, and infecting Day

Old Norse heygarðr (“hay-yard”)[3]

haggard (plural haggards)

1. (dialect, Isle of Man, Ireland, Scotland) A stackyard, an enclosure on a farm for stacking grain, hay, etc.

   He tuk a slew [swerve] round the haggard