Word.ws English Dictionary

mangling

mangling is the present participle and gerund of mangle.

Meaning of mangle

Verb (1)

mangle (third-person singular simple present mangles, present participle mangling, simple past and past participle mangled)

  1. (transitive) To change, mutilate, or disfigure by cutting, tearing, rearranging, etc.
    • mangled with ghastly wounds through plate and mail1667, John Milton, “Book VI”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished...
  2. (transitive) To modify (an identifier from source code) so as to produce a unique identifier for internal use by the compiler, etc.

Verb (2)

mangle (third-person singular simple present mangles, present participle mangling, simple past and past participle mangled)

  1. (archaic, transitive) To wring laundry.

See all 9 meanings of mangle

Noun

mangling (plural manglings)

  1. An act in which something is mangled
    • After having been an inmate of our family nine years, having suffered countless frights and manglings from the many kittens we had kept in the time, he at last died by the claws of the family cat, when released one fine afternoon for an airing, and to have his cage cleaned.1851, Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams, Small Means and Great Ends
    • That disc comes on the heels of Background Check, a compilation of oddities and rarities that includes obligatory (though still addictive) punk manglings of pop hits like "I Ran" and "I've Got the Music in Me," as well as presumably more respectable numbers like "Oh Bondage, Up Yours!" and "12XU."2005 April 22, Liz Armstrong, Kabir Hamid, Monica Kendrick, Peter Margasak, “The Treatment”, in Chicago Reader

Forms of mangling

pluralmanglings

Questions about mangling

What does mangling mean?
Mangling means an act in which something is mangled.
What is mangling the present participle and gerund of?
Mangling is the present participle and gerund of mangle.
What part of speech is mangling?
Mangling is a noun.
What is the plural of mangling?
The plural of mangling is manglings.

Words near mangling in the dictionary

  1. mangler
  2. manglers
  3. mangles
  4. manglest
  5. mangleth
  6. mangling
  7. manglingly
  8. manglings
  9. Manglish
  10. Mangloy
  11. mangnae

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mangling (page history and authors); mangle (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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Cite this entry: “mangling.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mangling. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.