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

And December’s apparent missile hit on Azerbaijan Airlines killed 38 and left the aircraft as mangled wreckage with shrapnel holes. —Michael Goldstein, Forbes, 15 Jan. 2025

California Riverside County deputy killed in crash, department’s third on-duty death in five months May 15, 2023 Video from the scene showed a mangled, upside down sheriff’s motorcycle near the center divider about 30 yards away from a Toyota sedan, which was smashed from the rear. —Andrew J. Campa, Los Angeles Times, 8 Jan. 2025

Video aired on South Korean broadcasters showed thick, dark plumes of smoke rising from the mangled plane as firefighters and emergency workers surrounded the scene. —Kelly Kasulis Cho, arkansasonline.com, 30 Dec. 2024

Images on social media showed a mangled fire truck lying next to the train tracks. —Minyvonne Burke, NBC News, 28 Dec. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

15th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1