Definition of "haggard"

Staring his eyes, and haggard was his look.

1685, John Dryden, The Despairing Lover

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.

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

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

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

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.

1986, John le Carré, A Perfect Spy

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

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, [Act III, scene i]

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

1856, John Henry Walsh, Manual of British Rural Sports

I have loved this proud disdainful haggard.

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, [Act IV, scene ii]

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

1699, Samuel Garth, The Dispensary