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 from local news stations showed mangled train cars, some stacked atop each other, and smoke from grass fires drifting into the surrounding rural area. —Jordan King, MSNBC Newsweek, 13 Aug. 2025

Abelardo raced outside to find his brother inside the mangled Corolla. —Rebecca White, New York Daily News, 12 Aug. 2025

Photos of the incident show the mangled wreckage lodged in a tree, with fragments dangling in branches and electrical cables. —Bonny Chu , Danielle Wallace, FOXNews.com, 11 Aug. 2025

Photos taken by Star-Telegram media partner WFAA-TV show a mangled white truck on the ground near the bridge’s support pillars. —Harriet Ramos, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 1 Aug. 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