Word.ws English Dictionary

gnarled

/nɑː(ɹ)ld/

gnarled adjective: knotty and misshapen. Also the simple past and past participle of gnarl.

Adjective

gnarled (comparative more gnarled, superlative most gnarled)

  1. Knotty and misshapen.
    • Three chairs of the steamer type, all maimed, comprised the furniture of this roof-garden, with […] on one of the copings a row of four red clay flower-pots filled with sun-baked dust from which gnarled and rusty stalks thrust themselves up like withered elfin limbs.1914 November, Louis Joseph Vance, “An Outsider […]”, in Munsey’s Magazine, volume LIII, number II, New York, N.Y.: The Frank A[ndrew] Munsey Company, […], published 1915, →OCLC, chapter I (Anarchy)...
    • For students of history and culture, the cherry trees’ delicate flowers and gnarled trunks speak to the enduring soft power of global goodwill, culture, and faith in a better future to overcome division, including wartime enmity and destruction.2026 March 27, The Monitor's Editorial Board, “When spring bursts forth with renewal”, in The Christian Science Monitor, Boston, Massachusetts: Christian Science Publishing Society, →ISSN, →OCLC
  2. Made rough by age or hard work.

Also used as

gnarled is also the simple past and past participle of gnarl.

Examples of gnarled in a sentence

  • Above a certain elevation, the aspens gave way to scrubby, gnarled pines.
  • Orange trees and apricot trees huddled amid the gray-silver leaves of gnarled olive-branched trees.
  • He roared and dismissed the class, hitting out with his old mottled gnarled niefs.

All 15 example sentences with gnarled

Synonyms of gnarled

Forms of gnarled

comparativemore gnarled
superlativemost gnarled

Origin of gnarled

First attested Shakespeare 1603: : Thy sharpe and sulpherous bolt Splits the vn-wedgable [unwedgable] and gnarled Oke [oak]. : Measure for Measure, Act II, scene ii, line 116 Variant of knurled, from knurl. By surface analysis, gnarl + -ed, though gnarl is a later back-formation. Popular use by 19th century.

See gnarl (Etymology 2).

Words formed from gnarled

Questions about gnarled

What does gnarled mean?
Gnarled means knotty and misshapen.
What part of speech is gnarled?
Gnarled is an adjective.
How do you pronounce gnarled?
Gnarled is pronounced /nɑː(ɹ)ld/.

Words near gnarled in the dictionary

  1. gnaphaliums
  2. gnaphosid
  3. gnaphosids
  4. gnar
  5. gnarl
  6. gnarled
  7. gnarledly
  8. gnarley
  9. gnarlier
  10. gnarliest
  11. gnarliness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gnarled (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-gnarled.wav.

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