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

Schjerfbeck uses the rough weave of the canvas to turn Reuter into a husk of himself, with an empty pair of brown eyes and a mangled ear. —Zachary Fine, New Yorker, 19 Jan. 2026

One car’s wheels have been removed; another sports a mangled fender. —Daniel Miller, Los Angeles Times, 6 Jan. 2026

Nina returns to the house days later, only to find Andrew’s mangled, bruised corpse in the attic with several teeth missing. —Patrick Ryan, USA Today, 20 Dec. 2025

The other is parked at the dock with a mangled railing. —Michele Gile, CBS News, 11 Dec. 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