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

And the mangled edge of my middle finger can attest to the fact that replacing them is not without risk. —Anthony Karcz, Forbes.com, 29 June 2025

Lee, the Taiwanese master of repression and ritual, understood it instinctively — this collision of big skies and small mangled hearts. —Philip Martin, Arkansas Online, 27 June 2025

Cleanup of damaged buildings, downed trees and mangled power lines continued in northern Minnesota on Sunday, in the wake of severe storms that walloped the region early Saturday. —Andrew Krueger, Twin Cities, 23 June 2025

The driveway gate of the waist-high chain-link fence dividing the front yard from the sidewalk was bent and mangled, lashed to a metal fence pole with white rope. —Connor Sheets, Los Angeles Times, 16 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