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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About two hours after the crash, a twisted, mangled helicopter lay upside down across the freeway. Ishani Desai, Sacbee.com, 7 Oct. 2025 The secrets of a zone run or a pass-pro slide are known only to a crazy few with bad backs, oversized t-shirts, dirt under their mangled fingernails, and a permanent dent on their foreheads. Dieter Kurtenbach, Mercury News, 16 Sep. 2025 The project was fueled by $800,000 from donors touched by the story of Dudley, a Tennessee cow with a mangled foot who got a second chance at life with a prosthetic limb. Kelly Puente, Nashville Tennessean, 16 Sep. 2025 Other images show debris alongside the mangled orange and white funicular car, which slammed into buildings before landing on its side, off the track. Natalie Neysa Alund, USA Today, 4 Sep. 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 20 Oct. 2025.

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