MANGLE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Mangle

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/mˈæŋgəl/ Listen

noun

mangle n. A machine for smoothing linen or cotton cloth, as sheets, tablecloths, napkins, and clothing, by roller pressure, often with heated rollers.

Mangle rack (Mach.), a contrivance for converting continuous circular motion into reciprocating rectilinear motion, by means of a rack and pinion, as in the mangle. The pinion is held to the rack by a groove in such a manner that it passes alternately from one side of the rack to the other, and thus gives motion to it in opposite directions, according to the side in which its teeth are engaged.

Mangle wheel, a wheel in which the teeth, or pins, on its face, are interrupted on one side, and the pinion, working in them, passes from inside to outside of the teeth alternately, thus converting the continuous circular motion of the pinion into a reciprocating circular motion of the wheel.

verb

Mangle v. t. (past & past part. mangled; pres. part. mangling)

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."

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."

Mangle v. t. To smooth with a mangle, as damp linen or cloth.

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Etymology of 'Mangle'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Mangle" Quotes from Famous Books

... how they wrangle! The manners that they never mend, The characters they mangle! They eat and drink, and scheme and plod, And go to church on Sunday; And many are afraid of God, ...

— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr

... and other influences were on the knees of the gods, but Wiley decided that there should be no more accidents. That was something preventable and no more love-sick engineers were going to use his gearings for a clothes mangle. He engaged two watchmen who were mechanics as well and then he kept watch over his watchmen. Neither by day nor by night did he go down the hill for more than a few minutes at a time and on dark, stormy nights he wandered about like a specter watching the shadows ...

— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge

... 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 ...

— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... is not a single simile in Leonidas,' says Lyttleton, 'that is borrowed from any of the ancients, and yet there is hardly any poem that has such a variety of beautiful comparisons.' The similes of Milton come so flat and dry out of Glover's mangle, that they are indeed quite another thing from what they appear in the poems of ...

— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... he "put out" his excitement, or whatever other emotion the matter involved, as he put out his washing; than which no arrangement could make more for domestic order. It was quite for Strether himself in short to feel a personal analogy with the laundress bringing home the triumphs of the mangle. ...

— The Ambassadors • Henry James

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