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

In western North Carolina, brutal rains have caused houses to float away from subdivisions, bridges to crumble and semi-trucks to become crumpled into mangled piles. —Eric Lagatta, USA TODAY, 1 Oct. 2024

Biden's every word and move will be dissected, every mangled sentence scrutinized, every stiff move or mind freeze discussed. —Axios, 11 July 2024

Despite the cleanup efforts, Biden’s comment — mangled or otherwise — threw a monkey wrench into the Harris campaign’s plan to highlight her pledge to govern for all Americans, regardless of party. —Dan Mangan, CNBC, 30 Oct. 2024

The former suffered a badly mangled front end and was unable to drive away from the accident, while the latter ended up on its side, the contents of its bed spilled around it. —Bryan Hood, Robb Report, 23 Oct. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

15th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1