Literary notes about mangled (AI summary)
The word "mangled" is often deployed in literature to evoke vivid images of brutal dismemberment and chaotic violence. Authors use it to describe bodies reduced to gruesome fragments, as in the depiction of blood-soaked dismemberment in battlefields ([1], [2]) or the horrific aftermath of savage encounters ([3], [4]). At times, it serves as a literal account of physical injury—detailing torn limbs and shattered forms ([5], [6])—while in other contexts it operates more symbolically to convey a state of ruin or disorder ([7], [8]). Whether denoting the aftermath of warfare, mythic battles from ancient epics ([9], [10]), or even the grotesque outcome of cruelty in modern narratives ([11], [12]), the adjective intensifies the reader's sense of profound trauma and the destruction of form.
- The beasts tore the victims limb from limb and made poor mangled corpses of them in the twinkling of an eye.
— from The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain - Shortly after Sir Ralph was slain by the French, who mangled him dreadfully, cut off his limbs, and tore his heart out.
— from Fox's Book of Martyrs by John Foxe - or what land now holds thy mangled corpse, thy body torn limb from limb?
— from The Aeneid of Virgil by Virgil - Arms, and carcasses, and mangled limbs, were promiscuously strewed, and the field was dyed in blood.
— from The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus by Cornelius Tacitus - getting ready; the mangled jaw bound up rudely with bloody linen: a spectacle to men.
— from The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle - His face and hands were terribly mangled by his passage through the glass, but loss of blood had no effect in diminishing his resistance.
— from A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle - I can't help it—I shudder when I think of the possibility of being mangled or—or blinded.
— from Rilla of Ingleside by L. M. Montgomery - But even in the rural districts Latin made its way slowly and in a mangled form, yet none the less surely.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park - And the son of Vinata, that ranger of the skies, attacking their bodies, mangled them into pieces.
— from The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 - And mangled with the discus and wounded with swords, darts and maces, the Asuras in large numbers vomited blood and lay prostrate on the earth.
— from The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 - not a bad idea, that—queer thing to have it mangled when it’s upon one, though—trying process—very.’
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens - The murderer was gone long ago; but there lay his victim in the middle of the lane, incredibly mangled.
— from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
