mangled

adjective

man·​gled ˈmaŋ-gəld How to pronounce mangled (audio)
1
: severely injured or damaged by cutting, tearing, or crushing
a mangled foot
A special bed—a box lined with cottonwool—was made for the mangled pigeon while the Wilsons nursed it …Iain Macdonald
mangled warplanes lie strewn across the desert floor, their wings and tails torn off, their fuselages punctured.Richard Wolkomir
2
: spoiled or made incoherent
a mangled message
mangled punctuation/syntax
This is a draft manuscript waiting for an editor to impose coherence and to smooth over mangled grammar, malapropisms and political oversimplifications.Emily MacFarquhar

Examples of mangled in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web
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The building that housed the daycare was now a mangled, catastrophic mess. Ashley Killough, CNN Money, 19 Apr. 2025 Shards of debris scattered across the car lot and wrapped around the mangled trees. Adrian Sainz, Los Angeles Times, 3 Apr. 2025 The family is pretty much a mangled bunch — but that’s what drew me to it! Stephen Schaefer, Boston Herald, 3 Apr. 2025 Just as the reports and images of atrocities committed against innocent Israelis horrifies me, the images of dead, mangled, and psychologically traumatized children haunt me as a mother and grandmother. Ron Estes, MSNBC Newsweek, 28 Mar. 2025 See All Example Sentences for mangled

Word History

First Known Use

15th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Time Traveler
The first known use of mangled was in the 15th century

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Cite this Entry

“Mangled.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mangled. Accessed 2 Jun. 2025.

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