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Glite Dictionary
🪵 A twisted lump 🪵 To twist
to gnarl

to gnarl

8.6
To twist into a knotted, rough shape often in wood
  • verb
  • /nɑrl/
translation icon : torcer
  • As she worked on the sculpture, she noticed how the wood began to gnarl into intricate, beautiful shapes.

Examples

  • The gnarl in the tree trunk made it difficult to carve a smooth surface for the new bench.

  • The roots... the branches of the two trees, reaching, twisting, gnarling around each other, have finally become a single knotted trunk.

    Tolkien (2019)

  • Moss growing in wide, lush patches on the walls of the loggia or portico; vines covering half the house; the smooth, worn roots of a huge tree gnarling up through a stone semicircle at the front door.

    Fiction book (1999)

  • The ancient oak tree had gnarled branches that looked like twisted, crooked arms reaching for the sky.

Synonyms

to contort
vsto gnarl
17 7.5

To twist a body or object into a strange shape

is a knotted deformation often found in wood or trees
to kink
vsto gnarl
3 5.4

To make a rope, wire or hose bend sharply

forms a knotted or overall deformation rather than a single sharp bend
to twistle
vsto gnarl
  • UK
9.9

To wrap something by turning it around another object

creates internal knotted deformities rather than a coil around another object

How Twisted

to contort
17 7.5
to gnarl
8.6
to twist
231 1.7
to bend
268 1.0

Surface Forms

gnarl infinitive
gnarled past
gnarled past participle
gnarling present participle
gnarls third person singular

Etymology

Gnarl comes from an old word for a twisted 'knot' or lump in wood. So, to gnarl is to twist something into a knotted shape, like wind and time twisting a tree's branches.