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Mangle   Listen
verb
Mangle  v. t.  (past & past part. mangled; pres. part. mangling)  
1.
To cut or bruise with repeated blows or strokes, making a ragged or torn wound, or covering with wounds; to tear in cutting; to cut in a bungling manner; to lacerate; to mutilate. "Mangled with ghastly wounds through plate and mail."
2.
To mutilate or injure, in making, doing, or performing; as, to mangle a piece of music or a recitation. "To mangle a play or a novel."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Mangle" Quotes from Famous Books



... use of being fond of music if you aren't willing to mangle it for the sake of producing it?... I swear I'd rather hear a man picking out Aupres de ma Blonde on a trombone that Kreisler playing Paganini impeccably ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos

... obtains no burial! As though it matters in what manner the body, once it is dead, is consumed: by fire, by flood, by time! Do what you will, these all achieve the same end. Ah, but the beasts will mangle the body! As though fire would deal with it any more gently; when we are angry with our slaves that is the punishment which we consider the most severe. What folly it is, then, to do everything we can to prevent the grave from leaving any part of us behind {when ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... purchased of the French minister they do not incline to take, but will be glad of some of the others. They will also leave a large glass lamp in the entry or hall, and will take one or more of my glass lamps in lieu of it. Mrs. Morris has a mangle (I think it is called) for ironing clothes, which, as it is fixed in the place where it is commonly used, she proposes to leave and take mine. To this I have no objection, provided mine is equally good and convenient; but if I should obtain any ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... the name of the murdered king, and the head, severed from the body, was carried round to each of the guests, who, after placing the liberty cap on his own head, pronounced the word "Tyrant!" and proceeded to mangle with his knife that of the luckless creature doomed to be served for so unworthy a company! One of the democratic taverns displayed as a sign a revolting picture of the mutilated and bloody ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... and second, that, except in the case of she-bears protecting or avenging their cubs, the Grizzly ceased his attack when satisfied that his enemy was no longer capable of continuing the fight, and showed no disposition to wantonly mangle an apparently dead man. Since the forty she-bears came out of the wilderness and ate up a drove of small boys for guying a holy man, who was unduly sensitive about his personal dignity, the female of the ursine species, however, ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly

... natural to a little mind in a great place. The severest punishment which the two Houses could have inflicted on him would have been to set him at liberty and send him to Oxford. There he might have stayed, tortured by his own diabolical temper, hungering for Puritans to pillory and mangle, plaguing the Cavaliers, for want of somebody else to plague with his peevishness and absurdity, performing grimaces and antics in the cathedral, continuing that incomparable diary, which we never see without forgetting the vices of his heart In the imbecility of his intellect minuting ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Gravedigger to one actor. Some care had to be exercised that the doubled characters did not clash, and were not required to be simultaneously present upon the scene. But, indeed, the strollers did not hesitate to mangle their author when his stage directions did not accord with their convenience. The late Mr. Meadows used to relate that when in early life he was a member of the Tamworth, Stratford-upon-Avon, and Warwick company, he was cast for Orozembo, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... then my Hother! Two savage bears among the bushes yonder Attack'd him; if thou hast love for virtue, Assist him quick; if thou delayest a moment, The noblest heart that ever beat they'll mangle! Oh! quick: ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald

... have of that house at St. Yvon, which I have since learnt is no more, the Germans having reduced it to a powdered up mound of brick-dust and charred straw. Outside, and lying all around, were a miscellaneous collection of goods. Half a sewing machine, a gaudy cheap metal clock, a sort of mangle with strange wooden blades (which I subsequently cut off to make shelves with), and a host of other dirty, rain-soaked odds ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather

... fine lad is going to marry my daughter; she's the genius who double-crossed her own father and got behind Bill Conway. God bless her. God bless him. Nobody can throttle my pride in that boy and his achievements. You two tried to mangle him and you forced me to play your game. While he was earning the medal of honor from Congress, I sat around planning to parcel out his ranch to a passel of Japs. I'll never be done with ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... counted), and are the pest of the farmer, for, unless his flocks are protected at night within stockades or enclosures, they are certain to be attacked. Not satisfied with killing enough to satisfy hunger, these dogs tear and mangle for sheer delight of blood, and will destroy twenty times as many as they can eat, leaving the miserably torn carcases on the field. Nor are the sheep always safe by day if the wood-dogs happen to be hungry. The shepherd is, therefore, usually accompanied by two or three mastiffs, of whose great ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... children could be gathered together to see other men, women, and children torn and devoured by lions and tigers. Let us hope, that by the time the Colosseum has entirely crumbled away, men will no longer meet in thousands to kill and mangle ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton

... gradually smoothed away, and in a week's time everything actually had come round. The roof was mended, a kitchen maid was found—a crony of the village elder's—hens were bought, the cows began giving milk, the garden hedge was stopped up with stakes, the carpenter made a mangle, hooks were put in the cupboards, and they ceased to burst open spontaneously, and an ironing-board covered with army cloth was placed across from the arm of a chair to the chest of drawers, and there was a smell of flatirons in ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... he had filled himself he plunged out and rushed away, wrought up to the extreme fighting pitch of temper. Diable! if he could but come across that Lieutenant Barlow, how he would smash him and mangle him! In magnifying his prowess with the lens of imagination he swelled and puffed as ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... it, and ran through, so as to be fitted for the operations which began at five o'clock in the morning, and absorbed all the women of the establishment, and even old Pucklechurch, who was called on to turn the mangle. ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge

... I was,' said Martha; 'except for fetching up a fresh pail and the leather that that slut of a Eliza 'd hidden away behind the mangle.' ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... haven't got the heart to dhrive the head av this monkey wrench into that bald shpot. If he'd hair there I wouldn't mind." Mr. Reardon sighed dismally. "I'll have to wrap a waddin' av waste around me weapon, so I'll neither kill nor mangle but lay thim out wit' wan ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... is as pop-eyed as a lobster when he gets through, trying to keep the field of operations in view. I had special bolts made which I had soldered on. This is practicable where the wax paint is used and the mangle of the laundry avoided. A good paint will ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... banquet: the pleasure of helping their friends is the gratification, which is their reward for the trouble they have had in preparing the feast. Such gentry are the terror of all good housewives: to obtain their favourite cut they will so unmercifully mangle your joints, that a dainty dog would hardly get a meal from them after; which, managed by the considerative hands of an old housekeeper, would furnish a decent dinner for a large family."—Vide "Almanach ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... provisions for water, hot and cold; by wringers, which save at once the strength of the linen and of the laundress; and by drying-closets connected with ranges, where articles can in a few moments be perfectly dried. These, with the use of a small mangle, such as is now common in America, reduce the labors of ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... is a heavy, glazed cotton fabric with a smooth finish. It was first made in Cambrai, France. It has a plain weave and a width of thirty-six inches. Cambrics are dyed in a jig machine. After dyeing they are run through a mangle containing the sizing substance, then dried, dampened, and run through a calender machine. The glossy effect is obtained in this last finishing process. Cambric is used for shirtwaists, dress goods, etc. The finer grades are made from ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley

... whom madame had tricked as she had him. One of his furies seized him. Some men die of rage; D'Herouville went mad. He looked wildly around for physical relief, something upon which to vent his rage. The blood gushed into his brain—something to break, to rend, to mangle. He seized a small sapling, bore it to the ground, put his foot on it and snapped it with ease. He did not care that he lacerated his hands or that the branches flying back scratched his face. He laughed fiercely. The Chevalier first, that meddling son of the left-hand whom his father ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath

... Jenny Jones was a lovely gal, And her mother worked a mangle; She fell in love with a fine yonng lad, Who played on ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille

... don't they wait till matters scientific are settled, and then write their books? Why write a book at all when you know that day after tomorrow some one will come along and refute all the theories and mangle the facts? These science chaps must spend a great deal of their time changing their intellectual clothing. It would be great fun to come back a hundred years from now and read the books on science, psychology, ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... husband, and fascination has therefore ceased to be a matter of business, a practical question of bread-and-butter, to be grappled with in the spirit in which they would, if necessary, go out charing, or keep a mangle—they are painfully devoid of that eagerness to please and that readiness to be pleased which, in the present imperfect state of civilization, are among woman's ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... you! Woe to you! Bondsmen, I mourn for you! Though you're in rags, e'en the rags shall be torn from you! Fiercely with knouts in the past did they mangle you: 120 Clutches of iron in ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov

... as a timepiece stops in a house that is stricken by lightning. 160 Thus made answer and spake, or rather stammered than answered: "Such a message as that, I am sure I should mangle and mar it; If you would have it well done,—I am only repeating your maxim,— You must do it yourself, you must not leave it to others!" But with the air of a man whom nothing can turn from his purpose 165 Gravely shaking his head, made answer ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson

... for other things. . . . I suppose you have to sleep on a hard bed, and get up in the dark when a bell rings. There aren't any carpets, and they don't give you enough to eat, as likely as not. Margaret, why should you? It's the sort of work anyone can do-teaching kids to mangle." ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... them all up in the canvas, tied string round the bundle, and put it between the rollers of a thing that looked like a mangle. ...
— Chambers's Elementary Science Readers - Book I • Various

... Cruelty which they are so famous for (if any of them are ignorant enough not to know that they are Devils incarnate) they may, for ought we know, go on for God's sake; torture, murther, starve to Death, mangle and macerate, and all for God, and God's Catholic Church; and 'tis certainly the Devil's Master-piece to bring Mankind to such a Perfection of Devilism as that of the Inquisition is; for if the Devil had not been in them, could they christen such a Hell-fire Judicature as the Inquisition ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe

... things; and a law which is dictated by humanity can surely be no disgrace to the statute-book. Who that has witnessed the barbarous and unmanly sports of the cock-pit and the stake—the fiendlike ingenuity displayed by the lord of the creation in teaching his dependents to torture, mangle, and destroy each other for his own amusement—the cruelties of the greedy and savage task-master towards the dumb labourer whose strength has decayed in his service—or the sufferings of the helpless brute that drags with pain and difficulty its maimed carcass to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various

... He leaves a generation of these stupendous tools to rust at the bottom of the ocean, they are no more than a Pugatschef, a Fouche, a Louvel, or the Abbe Carlos Herrera. Gifted with immense power over tenderer souls, they entrap them and mangle them. It is grand, it is fine —in its way. It is the poisonous plant with gorgeous coloring that fascinates children in the woods. It is the poetry of evil. Men like you ought to dwell in caves and never come out of them. You have ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... livelihood, and, in the course of them, have seen a deal of life, to be sure. I've sold cigars and pocket-handkerchiefs at the corners of streets; I've been a billiard-marker; I've been a director (in the panic year) of the Imperial British Consolidated Mangle and Drying Ground Company. I've been on the stage (for two years as an actor, and about a month as a cad, when I was very low); I've been the means of giving to the police of this empire some very valuable information (about licensed victuallers, gentlemen's ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray

... rive, rend, slit, split, splinter, chip, crack, snap, break, tear, burst; rend &c, rend asunder, rend in twain; wrench, rupture, shatter, shiver, cranch^, crunch, craunch^, chop; cut up, rip up; hack, hew, slash; whittle; haggle, hackle, discind^, lacerate, scamble^, mangle, gash, hash, slice. cut up, carve, dissect, anatomize; dislimb^; take to pieces, pull to pieces, pick to pieces, tear to pieces; tear to tatters, tear piecemeal, tear limb from limb; divellicate^; skin &c 226; disintegrate, dismember, disbranch^, disband; disperse ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... Birmingham, is the manufacture of guns for the African market. They are made for about a dollar and a half: the barrel is filled with water, and if the water does not come through, it is thought proof sufficient. Of course, they burst when fired, and mangle the wretched negro, who has purchased them upon the credit of English faith, and received them, most probably, as the price of human flesh! No secret is made of this abominable trade, yet the government never interferes, and the persons concerned in it are not ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey

... upon, it is very plain, that all regulations made for the protection of the slave are perfectly useless;—however grievous his wrongs, they cannot be proved. The master is merely obliged to take the precaution not to starve, or mangle, or murder his negroes, in the presence of a white man. No matter if five hundred colored people be present, they cannot testify to the fact. Blackstone remarks, that "rights would be declared in vain, and in vain directed to be observed, if there were no method of recovering and ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child

... was a large room full of company, which I usually get together on a Wednesday evening (all great men have public days), to propose to me to have my face done by a Miss Beetham (or Betham), a miniature painter, some relation to Mrs. Beetham the Profilist or Pattern Mangle woman opposite to St. Dunstan's, to put before my book ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... form a trust, and screw up prices to freeze the poor in winter! And you... [to RUTHERFORD] you're Rutherford, the steel king, I take it. You have slaves working twelve hours a day and seven days a week in your mills. And you mangle them in hideous accidents, and then cheat their widows of their rights... and then you build churches, and set your parsons to preach to them about love and self-sacrifice! To teach them charity, while you crucify justice! To trick them with visions of an ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair

... and all did what they could, not only to smother, but to bruise her. Some stood up and jumped upon the poor girl with their feet, some with their knees, and others in different ways seemed to seek how they might best beat the breath out of her body, and mangle it, without coming in direct contact with it, or seeing the effects of their violence. During this time, my feelings were almost too strong to be endured. I felt stupefied, and was scarcely conscious of what I did. Still, fear for myself remained in a sufficient ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk

... crew on board.* (* "The country round Port Curtis is over-spread with grass and produces the Eucalyptus. Much of the shores and low islands are overspread with Mangroves—the most common being the Rhizophora Mangle of Linn." Flinders.) At daylight Captain Flinders left us desiring me to get under weigh as soon as possible and get round to the Investigator. In working down we sounded constantly and found from 10 to 4 fathoms on each side, a safe channel ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee

... bolted and went into the lamp-post. As I said, rather sharply, to the man when I paid him, if his horse had been steady the thing would never have happened. He did not know what to answer, and made some silly remark about my not being fit to ride a mangle. Both then and at the time of the accident his language was ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain

... at a loss, and left it to Sylvie. "It's like a mangle," she said: "if things are put in, ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll

... mind also, ye wild critics, you scrapers-up of words, harpies who mangle the intentions and inventions of everyone, that as children only do we laugh, and as we travel onward laughter sinks down and dies out, like the light of the oil-lit lamp. This signifies, that to laugh you must be innocent, and pure of a heart, lacking which qualities ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac

... Faustus? Dost thou not perceive that thou art acting, in respect to the moral world, in the same manner as they act in regard to the physical world? They mangle the flesh of the living; and thou, by my destructive hand, exercisest thy ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... Anastasio, even as the other Gentlewoman formerly did to her Lover, still flying from him in great contempt and scorne: for which, she thought the Blood-hounds also pursued her at the heeles already, and a sword of vengeance to mangle her body. This feare grew so powerfull in her, that to prevent the like heavy doome from falling on her, she studied (by all her best and commendable meanes, and therein bestowed all the night season) how to change her hatred into kinde love, ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton

... to have suggested that the young man was made of sterner stuff than the obedient Theodorus Bailey. Still more surprising is it that Clinton should overlook, or insufficiently consider the fact that Tompkins was now the son-in-law of Mangle Minthorne, a wealthy citizen of New York, and the leader of the Martling Men, of whose opposition he had already been apprised, and whose bitter hostility he was about to experience. If he thought to disarm the enmity of Minthorne by helping the son-in-law, his hopes were raised only to be ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... cutting, slashing, pinking, and carbonadoing—a most unnatural office for one of the brotherhood, one who presumes to enrol himself among those whom he conspires with the Jeffreys and Jerdans to mangle and destroy. It is a Cain-like profession, and I deserve to be branded, and condemned to wander houseless over the world, if ever I indulge the murderous propensity to criticism. I was sorry to hear from Taylor yesterday that you were not in good health. What can be the matter with ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry

... with bands of blue and rose-red and the yellow ones with spots of red and green they pack in small baskets between rows of green leaves. The lobsters, always plentiful, they place in baskets having compartments so that they cannot get at each other and mangle their bodies fighting; the oysters they throw into a large common bucket, keeping out the small and inferior ones to carry to their huts to use for food. Whenever wind and weather permit the men go off on fishing expeditions, and ...
— The Shipwreck - A Story for the Young • Joseph Spillman

... the larger animals from point to point until they get them close to their common burrowing place; that then they all spring upon the victim, and worry it to death, leaving the puppies to approach the carcass and mangle ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... harm they are doing their children by allowing them to grow up ignorant of or indifferent to the marvelous possibilities in the art of conversation! In the majority of homes, children are allowed to mangle the English language in ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... silent after l in the following terminations,—ble, cle, dle, fle, gle, kle, ple, tle, zle; as in able, manacle, cradle, ruffle, mangle, wrinkle, supple, rattle, puzzle, which are pronounced a'bl, mana'cl, cra'dl, ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... shall be, but I am not as sanctified as I ever shall be. I look to be more and more sanctified—'to grow up unto Him in all things,' to be like Him, to be purified even as He is pure. I pray you make no mingle-mangle of things that do so differ in themselves, though 'tis true they come all of one source—the union and the unity ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... when he drew up level with her. "Put yourself through your mangle, washerwoman," she called out, "and iron your face and crimp it, and you'll pass for ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... nor much hindered by these additional fingers; but, by constant use, he has greatly developed the muscles of his right arm. To avoid a perturbing factor, we will assume that his wife, too, exercises her arms in an unusual degree: keeps a mangle, and has all the custom of the neighbourhood. Such being the circumstances, let us ask what are the established facts, and what are the beliefs and disbeliefs ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... be seen eating, and who is more shy of company when putting in than when putting out. In the Turkish empire, there are a great number of men who, to excel others, never suffer themselves to be seen when they make their repast: who never have any more than one a week; who cut and mangle their faces and limbs; who never speak to any one: fanatic people who think to honour their nature by disnaturing themselves; who value themselves upon their contempt of themselves, and purport to grow better by being worse. What monstrous animal is this, that is a ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... again.—Yah! yer great snivelling idjit!" he cried the next moment, in his rage against himself. "The old woman was right when I 'listed. She said I wasn't fit for a sojer—no good for nothing but to stop at home, carry back the washing, and turn the mangle. I'm ashamed o' myself. My word, though, the fog's not so thick, but ain't it cold! If I don't do something I shall freeze hard, and not be able to help him when it ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn

... morning. I then went to the house my mother used to live in. I knew that she was not there; yet I was disappointed and annoyed when I heard merry laughter within. I looked in, for the door was open; in the corner where my mother used to sit, there was a mangle, and two women busily at work; others were ironing at a large table; and when they cried out to me, 'What do you want?' and laughed at me, I turned away in disgust, and went to a neighbouring cottage, the inmates of which had been very intimate with my mother. I found the wife at home, ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat

... clothing, handing his hat to the marshal, who bound a handkerchief over his eyes, his hands being free at his own request. Seating himself with his face to the firing party, and with hands clasped over his head, he exclaimed: "Let them shoot the balls through my heart. Don't let them mangle my body." ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... a guard in the hut, and they challenged, and the sergeant answered. Then, we went into the hut, where there was a smell of tobacco and whitewash, and a bright fire, and a lamp, and a stand of muskets, and a drum, and a low wooden bedstead, like an overgrown mangle without the machinery, capable of holding about a dozen soldiers all at once. Three or four soldiers who lay upon it in their great-coats were not much interested in us, but just lifted their heads and ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens



Words linked to "Mangle" :   iron out, cut up, falsify, deface, mutilate, press, murder, damage, blemish, warp, mingle-mangle, garble, disfigure, mar, iron, maul, clothes dryer, wound, clothes drier, mangler, injure, Rhizophora mangle, distort



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