mangle

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

Merriam-Webster

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🗓️ 11 January 2024

⏱️ 2 minutes

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Summary

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 11, 2024 is:

mangle • \MANG-gul\ • verb

To mangle something is to ruin it due to carelessness or a lack of skill. Mangle can also mean “to injure or damage something or someone severely by cutting, tearing, or crushing.”

// Half-remembering a joke from her favorite sitcom, Ally mangled the punch line, but honestly this made it even funnier.

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Examples:

“A small tornado with 90 mph winds ripped through Calaveras County early Tuesday morning, uprooting and mangling trees in its wake, the National Weather Service Sacramento office said.” — Ariana Bindman, SFGate.com, 11 Jan. 2023

Did you know?

If you’re an aficionado of ironing appliances, you may be steamed that we did not highlight the noun mangle (“a machine for ironing laundry by passing it between heated rollers”) or its related verb (“to press or smooth with a mangle”) for today’s Word of the Day. You may even believe we mangled it! We concede, even if we fail to entirely smooth things over, that mangle is a perfectly fine word, coming as it does from the Dutch word mangel (not to be confused with the beet), but it is less commonly encountered than the mangle that means “to ruin or injure”; that mangle is unrelated, coming instead from Anglo-French. Its path in English has followed a trajectory similar to that of butcher, moving swiftly from applying to a violent action to a figurative use meaning “to bungle.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 11th.
0:11.2	Today's word is mangle spelled M-A-N-G-L-E-G-E-N-G-M-E-M-G-L-E-M-E-M-G-L-E-N-G-E-Mangle is a verb. To mangle something is to ruin it due to carelessness or a lack of skill. Mangeal can also mean to injure or damage something or someone severely by cutting, tearing, or crushing.
0:28.3	Here's the word used in a sentence from SF-gate.com by Ariana Bindman. A small tornado with 90 mile per hour winds
0:36.7	ripped through Calaveras County early Tuesday morning, uprooting and mangling trees in its wake, the National Weather Service Sacramento Office said.
0:47.0	If you're an officiando of ironing appliances, you may be steamed that we did not highlight the noun mangle, meaning a
0:57.4	machine for ironing laundry by passing it between heated rollers, or its related verb verb meaning to press or smooth with a
1:05.3	mangle for today's word of the day. You may even believe we mangled it. We
1:11.1	concede even if we fail to entirely smooth things over that
1:15.1	mangle is a perfectly fine word coming as it does from the Dutch word mangle not
1:20.4	to be confused with the beat, but it is less commonly encountered than the mangle that means to ruin or injure.
1:28.5	That mangle is unrelated, coming instead from Anglo-French. Its path in English has followed a trajectory similar
1:36.0	to that of the word butcher, moving swiftly from applying to a violent action to a figurative
1:42.2	use, meaning to bungal. With your word of the day I'm
1:45.6	Peter Sokoloski.
1:47.0	Visit Merriam Webster.com today for definitions, word play, and trending word lookups.

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