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
Iain Macdonald… mangled warplanes lie strewn across the desert floor, their wings and tails torn off, their fuselages punctured.—Richard Wolkomir
Richard Wolkomir2
: 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
Emily MacFarquharExamples of mangled in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
Although it is not known whether the ship has been freed from the mangled mess, detonating the largest remaining section sitting across its bow is a major step.
—Greg Wehner, Fox News, 14 May 2024
About a week later, a passerby found Buckner’s mangled torso stuffed inside a black plastic garbage bag that was bound with duct tape near the Bay Farm Island Bridge in Alameda.
—Jakob Rodgers, The Mercury News, 13 May 2024
Photos of the wreckage showed the mangled aircraft still smoldering in a homeowner’s front yard.
—Tanasia Kenney, Miami Herald, 2 May 2024
But the city park, a former centerpiece of the town that was once lined with towering oaks and hickories, and alive with a pool and ballfields and playgrounds, still looks like a big, vacant field with mangled tree stumps, empty concrete slabs, and a few piles of bricks from the old dugouts.
—Will Brantley, Field & Stream, 1 May 2024
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
Greg Wehner, Fox News, 14 May 2024
About a week later, a passerby found Buckner’s mangled torso stuffed inside a black plastic garbage bag that was bound with duct tape near the Bay Farm Island Bridge in Alameda.
—Jakob Rodgers, The Mercury News, 13 May 2024
Photos of the wreckage showed the mangled aircraft still smoldering in a homeowner’s front yard.
—Tanasia Kenney, Miami Herald, 2 May 2024
But the city park, a former centerpiece of the town that was once lined with towering oaks and hickories, and alive with a pool and ballfields and playgrounds, still looks like a big, vacant field with mangled tree stumps, empty concrete slabs, and a few piles of bricks from the old dugouts.
—Will Brantley, Field & Stream, 1 May 2024
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
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'mangled.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near mangled
Cite this Entry
“Mangled.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mangled. Accessed 18 May. 2024.
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