garble
Americanverb (used with object)
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to confuse unintentionally or ignorantly; jumble.
to garble instructions.
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to make unfair or misleading selections from or arrangement of (fact, statements, writings, etc.); distort.
to garble a quotation.
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Archaic. to take out the best of.
noun
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the act or process of garbling.
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an instance of garbling; a garbled phrase, literary passage, etc.
verb
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to jumble (a story, quotation, etc), esp unintentionally
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to distort the meaning of (an account, text, etc), as by making misleading omissions; corrupt
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rare to select the best part of
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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garblesimple
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garblessimple
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have garbledperfect
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has garbledperfect
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am garblingprogressive
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are garblingprogressive
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is garblingprogressive
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have been garblingperfect progressive
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has been garblingperfect progressive
Past
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garbledsimple
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had garbledperfect
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was garblingprogressive
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were garblingprogressive
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had been garblingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of garble
1400–50; late Middle English garbelen to remove refuse from spices < Old Italian garbellare to sift < Arabic gharbala < Late Latin crībellāre, derivative of crībellum, diminutive of Latin crībrum sieve ( see -elle); probably influenced by garboil
Explanation
When you garble something, you warp or distort it, making it hard to understand. Talking with marbles in your mouth is one sure way of garbling your speech. When garble first emerged on the scene in the early 15th century, it meant "to sift" or "sort through." So imagine a sentence so scrambled that you have to sort through each word, trying to figure out what everything means. Garbling can happen by accident, like when your radio signal is bad and the songs get all distorted. But spies often jumble up their secret messages on purpose to protect them from prying eyes and ears.
Vocabulary lists containing garble
The Vocabulary.com Top 1000
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"The Metamorphosis," Vocabulary from the graphic novel
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With the Fire on High
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Subtitles wouldn’t be the worst idea, though a sibling garble is part of their brand.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 16, 2025
Relatively quickly, he returned to his familiar slippery garble with a hit so ubiquitous it felt like a memory of how things once were.
From New York Times ● Dec. 6, 2023
Image: Meta When you use Voice Mode to garble the speech of those around you an icon will appear above your display name to indicate that you can’t hear what strangers are saying.
From The Verge ● Jun. 14, 2022
Unlike vaccines or antibodies that target the spike protein on the surface of the virus, molnupiravir works by introducing genetic errors that garble the coronavirus’s genetic code and stop it from making copies of itself.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 1, 2021
We’re driving and it’s stifling hot outside, but the heater is on and the windows are up, and the radio is loud but tuned to the garble between stations.
From "Hollow City" by Ransom Riggs
Error correction is already used in conventional computers and data transmission to fix garbles.
From New York Times ● Jun. 14, 2023
Fetterman has been campaigning and speaking at public events, but speaks haltingly at times, garbles an occasional word and struggles to hear through background noise and quickly process what he’s hearing.
From Washington Times ● Sep. 23, 2022
Fetterman has been campaigning and speaking at public events but avoids reporters, speaks haltingly at times, garbles an occasional word and struggles to hear through background noise and quickly process what he’s hearing.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 23, 2022
Simlish, by contrast, is strung together with round, funny noises; emotional garbles; an uncannily human sound.
From The Verge ● Feb. 7, 2020
"I thought so, too," Ty says, so quiet the orange phone garbles his voice.
From "How It Went Down" by Kekla Magoon
Greenspan delighted in his ability to keep markets and politicians on their toes by wrapping his views in complex, garbled syntax.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 22, 2026
The anchor offered a garbled 90-second monologue that credited and blamed both sides — if it said anything at all.
From Salon ● Jan. 10, 2026
Still, the October and November employment estimates are sure to be garbled by the deferred resignations of federal employees.
From MarketWatch ● Dec. 15, 2025
The BBC's science reporter Esme Stallard and other users received a garbled message with her alert.
From BBC ● Sep. 7, 2025
Twists again, and the radio coughs out a few garbled words of a Swiss broadcast.
From "The Boy Who Dared" by Susan Campbell Bartoletti
It uses a different mechanism than the Merck drug, which disables the virus by garbling its genome and has raised concerns about its potential to cause mutations in people’s cells.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 5, 2021
On the twice-as-expensive and open-back Ether Flows, the same can sometimes sound like distortion or garbling.
From The Verge ● Jul. 30, 2018
Disembodied utterances jumped about the room, were piped out of different speakers and were sometimes superimposed, garbling any attempt at comprehension.
From New York Times ● Oct. 31, 2016
The droning whir of the motor, garbling as it chews away stubble, is far from calming.
From Salon ● Feb. 28, 2015
Later editions of her Surinam book were needlessly reorganized according to different classification systems, garbling and misrepresenting her findings.
From "The Girl Who Drew Butterflies: How Maria Merian's Art Changed Science" by Joyce Sidman
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
