garbled
Britishadjective
Explanation
A garbled message makes no sense. If you get a bad phone connection, your friend's message might sound garbled. Or, if you have rewritten the same sentence numerous times, its message might also be garbled. When you were young you may have played the game telephone, where one student thinks up a line, whispers it to his neighbor, who whispers it to his neighbor, and so on, down the line. At the end, the last person to receive the message shouts it out; it usually has nothing to do with what the first person said: it has been garbled along the way. Most of the change is accidental, the price of being human and imperfect — you hear "dope" rather than "hope." Besides messages, facts can get garbled — remember the history test where you wrote 1960 instead of 1860?
Vocabulary lists containing garbled
The Sea of Monsters
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Bridge to Terabithia
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Darius the Great Is Not Okay
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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.
He complained about Canadian banking laws and told a garbled story about some friend of his who supposedly couldn’t buy a Gulfstream jet in Canada.
From Salon ● Sep. 4, 2026
The group exhibition “To Share a Stomach” is a bit like the children’s game Telephone, in which a phrase, whispered from person to person, inevitably comes out a bit garbled.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 20, 2026
You’re on Zoom, meeting with colleagues or catching up with a friend or trying to nail a job interview, when it happens: a freeze, garbled audio, a blank screen.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 18, 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
A voice began speaking in terribly garbled Russian.
From "Fallout: Spies, Superbombs, and the Ultimate Cold War Showdown" by Steve Sheinkin
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.
