haggard

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The Word of the Day for April 12 is:

haggard   \HAG-urd\   adjective 
     1 of a hawk : not tamed 
     2 a : wild in appearance *b : having a worn or emaciated 
appearance : gaunt 

Example sentence: 
     When Stacey saw Ed's haggard face and disheveled 
appearance, she knew something must be terribly wrong.

Did you know? 
     "Haggard" comes from falconry, the sport of hunting with a 
trained bird of prey. The birds used in falconry were not bred 
in captivity until very recently. Traditionally, falconers 
trained wild birds that were either taken from the nest when 
quite young or trapped as adults. A bird trapped as an adult is 
termed a "haggard," from the Middle French "hagard." Such a 
bird is notoriously wild and difficult to train, and it wasn't 
long before the falconry sense of "haggard" was being applied 
in an extended way to a "wild" and intractable person. Next, 
the word came to express the way the human face looks when a 
person is exhausted, anxious, or terrified. Today, the most 
common meaning of "haggard" is "gaunt" or "worn." 

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.