gnarled

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gnarled

(närld)

adj.

1. Having gnarls; knotty or misshapen: gnarled branches.

2. Rugged and roughened, as from old age or work: the gnarled hands of a carpenter.

[Probably variant of knarled, from knarl, tangle, knot, alteration of Middle English knarre, knot in wood; see knar.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

gnarled

(nɑːld)

adj

1. (Botany) having gnarls

2. (esp of hands) rough, twisted, and weather-beaten in appearance

3. perverse or ill-tempered

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

gnarled

(nɑrld)

adj.

1. (of trees) full of or covered with gnarls; bent; twisted.

2. having a rugged, weather-beaten appearance.

3. crabby; cantankerous.

[1595–1605; variant of knurled]

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

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Adj.

gnarled - used of old persons or old trees; covered with knobs or knots; "gnarled and knotted hands"; "a knobbed stick"

gnarly, knobbed, knotted, knotty

crooked - having or marked by bends or angles; not straight or aligned; "crooked country roads"; "crooked teeth"

gnarled

adjective

1. twisted, knotted, contorted, knotty, knurled a garden full of ancient gnarled trees

2. wrinkled, rough, rugged, leathery an old man with gnarled hands

Collins Thesaurus of the English Language – Complete and Unabridged 2nd Edition. 2002 © HarperCollins Publishers 1995, 2002

Translations

مُعَقَّد، كثير العُقَد

pokřivenýzkroucený

kroget

kræklóttur

gumbuotas

grumbuļainsmezglainszarains

forvridd knudret kroket

eğri büğrü

扭曲的

gnarled

[nɑːld] ADJ [wood, hands] → nudoso

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

gnarled

[ˈnɑː^rld] adj

[tree] → noueux/euse

[person] → ratatiné(e); [hands] → noueux/euse

Collins English/French Electronic Resource. © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

gnarled

adj tree, roots, branch, trunk → knorrig; hands, fingers → knotig; person → verhutzelt; (= bent) → krumm

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

gnarled

[nɑːld] adj → nodoso/a

Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995

gnarled

(naːld) adjective

(of trees, branches etc) twisted.

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References in classic literature ?

The old woman was a gnarled and leathery personage who could don, at will, an expression of great virtue.

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On the trees are only a few gnarled apples that the pickers have rejected.

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There were fifty frightful men with hairy bodies and gnarled and crooked legs.

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Below them, as they mounted, they glimpsed great gnarled trunks and branches of ancient trees, and above them were similar great gnarled branches.

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I thought my quest had brought me into a strange old haunted forest, and that I had thrown myself down to rest at the gnarled mossy root of a great oak-tree, while all about me was nought but fantastic shapes and capricious groups of gold-green bole and bough, wondrous alleys ending in mysterious coverts, and green lanes of exquisite turf that seemed to have been laid down in expectation of some milk-white queen or goddess passing that way.

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With its huge ungainly limbs sprawling unsymmetrically, and its gnarled hands and fingers, it stood an aged, stern, and scornful monster among the smiling birch trees.

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His father was a spare old man, his hands gnarled after the work of a lifetime, silent and upright; in the evening he read the paper aloud, while his wife and daughter (now married to the captain of a fishing smack), unwilling to lose a moment, bent over their sewing.

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Gnarled and crooked and with flexible hardness shall it then stand by the sea, a living lighthouse of unconquerable life.

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The coachman, a hard-faced, gnarled little fellow, saluted Sir Henry Baskerville, and in a few minutes we were flying swiftly down the broad, white road.

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He ate in the same open air; that is, his two only meals, -- breakfast and dinner: supper he never touched; nor reaped his beard; which darkly grew all gnarled, as unearthed roots of trees blown over, which still grow idly on at naked base, though perished in the upper verdure.

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Old and gnarled it may be, and yet you don't cut down the old fellow to make room for the flowerbeds, but lay out your beds so as to take advantage of the tree.

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When you ride through one of these villages at noon-day, you first meet a melancholy dog, that looks up at you and silently begs that you won't run over him, but he does not offer to get out of the way; next you meet a young boy without any clothes on, and he holds out his hand and says "Bucksheesh!" --he don't really expect a cent, but then he learned to say that before he learned to say mother, and now he can not break himself of it; next you meet a woman with a black veil drawn closely over her face, and her bust exposed; finally, you come to several sore-eyed children and children in all stages of mutilation and decay; and sitting humbly in the dust, and all fringed with filthy rags, is a poor devil whose arms and legs are gnarled and twisted like grape-vines.