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

Among the rubble are a dusty tire, a car frame, wire netting, some tanks and other mangled implements, all of which testify to the presence of people who have recently fled a makeshift encampment. —Rhoda Feng, Washington Post, 14 Apr. 2024

Lee has already saved her life once, in an early scene, yanking her out of harm’s way shortly before a bomb explodes, leaving behind streams of blood and mangled body parts. —Justin Chang, The New Yorker, 12 Apr. 2024

Nguyen asked to be cast as a nameless Vietnamese villager who gets blown up by the inner movie's American heroes, as a symbol for how casually Hollywood treated mangled Asian bodies. —Andrew R. Chow, TIME, 9 Apr. 2024

Bodor says the injured surgeon was surprisingly calm during pre-op, as the two discussed the complicated procedure to reconstruct the man's mangled hand. —Chris Arnold, NPR, 2 Apr. 2024

Ships will be unable to enter or exit the port until the mangled heap of steel debris from the bridge is cleared from the channel. —Lawrence Richard, Fox News, 28 Mar. 2024

As heavy-duty cranes lift away pieces of the mangled bridge, teams of highly specialized divers are hard at work in the river. —Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 5 Apr. 2024

Two other vehicles in the convoy were incinerated and mangled, indicating multiple hits. —Ashraf Khalil, Fortune, 3 Apr. 2024

Authorities on Friday will forge ahead with a salvage operation to remove the mangled bridge and debris and clear the waterway so the Port of Baltimore, a critical East Coast shipping artery, can resume operations. —USA TODAY, 29 Mar. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

15th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1