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

The nose of the aircraft appeared torn off, leaving mangled parts of the front of the plane dangling toward the ground. —Minyvonne Burke, NBC news, 24 Mar. 2026

Images showed the mangled front of the plane lifted into the air and its tail on the tarmac. —Brian Dakss, CBS News, 23 Mar. 2026

Among other things, there’s a mangled foot depicted in graphic enough detail to make a resident from The Pitt turn green. —Angie Han, HollywoodReporter, 15 Mar. 2026

Get a taste of the town's history and visit Wickenburg's Jail Tree, a 200-year-old mangled mesquite tree that is believed to be a makeshift jail during the town's Wild West days. —Paige Moore, AZCentral.com, 12 Mar. 2026

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