gnarled

comparative more gnarled · superlative most gnarled

1. Knotty and misshapen.

   For students of history and culture, the cherry trees’ delicate flowers and gnarled trunks speak to the enduring soft power of global goodwill, culture, and faith in a better future to overcome division, including wartime enmity and destruction.

   2026 March 27, The Monitor's Editorial Board, “When spring bursts forth with renewal”, in The Christian Science Monitor, Boston, Massachusetts: Christian Science Publishing Society, →ISSN, →OCLC

   1 more example

   Three chairs of the steamer type, all maimed, comprised the furniture of this roof-garden, with […] on one of the copings a row of four red clay flower-pots filled with sun-baked dust from which gnarled and rusty stalks thrust themselves up like withered elfin limbs.

   1914 November, Louis Joseph Vance, “An Outsider […]”, in Munsey’s Magazine, volume LIII, number II, New York, N.Y.: The Frank A[ndrew] Munsey Company, […], published 1915, →OCLC, chapter I (Anarchy), pages 377–378

2. Made rough by age or hard work.

1. participlepastsimple past and past participle of gnarl (Etymology 1)

1. participlepastsimple past and past participle of gnarl (Etymology 2)