mangle
1 Americannoun
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mangles
plural
verb (used with object)
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to smooth or press with a mangle.
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Metalworking. to squeeze (metal plates) between rollers.
verb
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to mutilate, disfigure, or destroy by cutting, crushing, or tearing
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to ruin, spoil, or mar
noun
verb
Synonym Usage
See maim.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of mangle1
First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English, from Anglo-French mangler, perhaps dissimilated variant of Old French mangonner “to mangle”; akin to mangonel
Origin of mangle2
1765–75; < Dutch mangel ≪ Late Latin manganum. See mangonel
Explanation
When you mangle something, you completely destroy it, by ripping, cutting, crushing, or otherwise mauling it into pieces. You shouldn't leave your new puppy alone in a room with your favorite shoes because he might mangle them with his sharp puppy teeth. A bad accident will mangle your bicycle, bending it beyond repair, and a paper shredder mangles a document by slicing it up. You can also use the word mangle to describe what happens when your uncle's terrible bluegrass band performs a cover of your favorite classic rock song — they mangle it.
Vocabulary lists containing mangle
Ghost
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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
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"Marigolds"
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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:
If “to toss and mangle these poor human bodies was the . . . law of Nature,” Thoreau asks us, “why waste any time in awe or pity?”
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 29, 2026
Anthony Seward was 20 when his hand was crushed in an industrial mangle - an injury that required multiple surgeries, including having the hand sewn into his abdomen to help it heal.
From BBC ● Jun. 6, 2023
To slightly mangle Bruce Springsteen's "Born To Run": the market's jammed with broken heroes on a last chance Powell drive; everybody's out on the run tonight, and there's no place left to hide.
From Reuters ● Mar. 7, 2023
Then I mangle a “merci” and step between the tables, each crowded with young tech workers speaking in euphonic blends of French and English, to a stool by the window overlooking the crowded street.
From New York Times ● Jun. 23, 2022
I threaded another wet tablecloth through the mangle to squeeze the water from it.
From "Fever 1793" by Laurie Halse Anderson
From there, activists could demand almost whatever they want: action on climate change, an end to mass surveillance and ICE raids, or an equitable health system that heals instead of mangles.
From Salon ● Dec. 11, 2025
If he mangles the facts or ignores them altogether, which he does often, Seales said there are other news sites and sources where viewers can fact-check him.
From Seattle Times ● May 24, 2024
Mr. Biden sometimes mangles his words and looks older than he used to because of his stiff gait and thinning voice.
From New York Times ● Jun. 4, 2023
The radiation inflicts photochemical damage that mangles nucleic acids—inactivating pathogenic viruses and bacteria, although not necessarily killing them.
From Scientific American ● Nov. 22, 2022
If we forsake her, infamy, that is now kept at bay, will seize upon her, and, while it mangles her form, will tear from her her innocence.
From Ormond, Volume II (of 3) or, The Secret Witness by Charles Brockden Brown
Aerial footage showed a large fire that appeared to involve shipping containers and cars, and the wreckage of a helicopter, whose mangled tail and rotors could be seen in the flames.
From Barron's ● Sep. 16, 2026
Whether artificial intelligence created the mangled pages remains unanswered.
From Salon ● Aug. 15, 2026
Outside Odesa, after a recent drone explosion, we found 83-year-old Andrii Dudik, surveying the mangled wreckage of his house and garden.
From BBC ● Aug. 6, 2026
The eerie ambient music that drives “Obsession” — so artfully serrated and delicately mangled by Burwell — emerged from a counterintuitive creative nuance that AI could never capture.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 21, 2026
Still and all: better to have mangled a raven than another human being.
From "The Milagro Beanfield War" by John Nichols
“Steve ‘Manouychin’ really gave me a ‘beauty’ when he pushed this loser,” Trump posted on social media External link in August, apparently deliberately mangling Mnuchin’s name.
From Barron's ● Dec. 24, 2025
Often ridiculed by parliamentary sketch writers for mangling the English language, to supporters he appeared an ordinary man facing the intellectual bullying by people with a better education.
From BBC ● Nov. 21, 2024
In his characteristic manner, the judge mixed commendation, supplication and insinuation, mangling metaphors and whole sentences in service of cutting insights.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 17, 2024
Storm chaser Brian Emfinger told Fox Weather that he watched the twister move through a mobile home park, mangling trailers and uprooting trees.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 15, 2023
Bartholomew wore khaki trousers pulled up high on his belly, and spoke with an American accent filled with holes, mangling words until they were impossible to understand.
From "Americanah" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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.
