adj, noun, verb ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A knot in wood; a knurl or a protuberance with twisted grain, on a tree.
2. 2
   something twisted and tight and swollen wordnet
3. 3
   Something resembling a knot in wood, such as in stone or limbs.

Verb

1. 1
   To knot or twist something. transitive
2. 2
   To snarl or growl; to gnar. intransitive

   "And wolves are gnarling who shall gnaw thee first."

3. 3
   make complaining remarks or noises under one's breath wordnet
4. 4
   twist into a state of deformity wordnet

Adjective

1. 1
   Gnarled, knotty, twisted.

Synonyms

All synonyms

knotanamorphismanamorphosisasymmetrybendbilge

Example

More examples

"And wolves are gnarling who shall gnaw thee first."

Etymology

Etymology 1

Back-formation from gnarled.

Etymology 2

Onomatopoeic.

Related phrases

vector field

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.