mangled

adjective

man·​gled ˈmaŋ-gəld 

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

Video footage from the outlet shows the ambulance with a mangled front and without any wheels. —Samira Asma-Sadeque, People.com, 9 June 2025

But they're all ruled by hate, self-loathing, narcissistic, mangled lives. —Matt Cabral, EW.com, 2 June 2025

Satellite imagery captured what remained of a mangled 5,000-ton North Korean naval destroyer damaged during its launch ceremony this week, leaving the country's dictator distraught. —Peter D'abrosca, FOXNews.com, 24 May 2025

They are mangled, bottled spiders of venom with humor and cutting, biting Irish lyricism. —Anne Thompson, IndieWire, 5 June 2025

Word History

First Known Use

15th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for mangled

• angled
• dangled
• fangled
• jangled
• spangled
• strangled
• tangled
• wrangled
• disentangled
• entangled
• newfangled
• untangled