garble
Americanverb (used with object)
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garbles,
present (3rd person singular)
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garbled,
past participle, past
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garbling
present participle
-
to confuse unintentionally or ignorantly; jumble.
to garble instructions.
-
to make unfair or misleading selections from or arrangement of (fact, statements, writings, etc.); distort.
to garble a quotation.
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Archaic. to take out the best of.
noun
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the act or process of garbling.
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an instance of garbling; a garbled phrase, literary passage, etc.
verb
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to jumble (a story, quotation, etc), esp unintentionally
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to distort the meaning of (an account, text, etc), as by making misleading omissions; corrupt
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rare to select the best part of
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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garblesimple
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garblessimple
-
have garbledperfect
-
has garbledperfect
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am garblingprogressive
-
are garblingprogressive
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is garblingprogressive
-
have been garblingperfect progressive
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has been garblingperfect progressive
Past
-
garbledsimple
-
had garbledperfect
-
was garblingprogressive
-
were garblingprogressive
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had been garblingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of garble
1400–50; late Middle English garbelen to remove refuse from spices < Old Italian garbellare to sift < Arabic gharbala < Late Latin crībellāre, derivative of crībellum, diminutive of Latin crībrum sieve ( see -elle); probably influenced by garboil
Explanation
When you garble something, you warp or distort it, making it hard to understand. Talking with marbles in your mouth is one sure way of garbling your speech. When garble first emerged on the scene in the early 15th century, it meant "to sift" or "sort through." So imagine a sentence so scrambled that you have to sort through each word, trying to figure out what everything means. Garbling can happen by accident, like when your radio signal is bad and the songs get all distorted. But spies often jumble up their secret messages on purpose to protect them from prying eyes and ears.
Vocabulary lists containing garble
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With the Fire on High
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The inconsistent purity of the copper could garble transmissions.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 4, 2026
Users can report problematic incidents to safety specialists, block users, garble the voices of users they don’t know or remove themselves from the social experience.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 8, 2023
Image: Meta When you use Voice Mode to garble the speech of those around you an icon will appear above your display name to indicate that you can’t hear what strangers are saying.
From The Verge ● Jun. 14, 2022
Burton said even through his neighbor’s German accent, he heard him garble the phrase.
From Fox News ● Sep. 24, 2021
Waves, colored zigzags, a garble of sound: it’s the Montreal satellite station, being blocked.
From "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood
Fetterman has been campaigning and speaking at public events, but speaks haltingly at times, garbles an occasional word and struggles to hear through background noise and quickly process what he’s hearing.
From Washington Times ● Sep. 23, 2022
Fetterman has been campaigning and speaking at public events but avoids reporters, speaks haltingly at times, garbles an occasional word and struggles to hear through background noise and quickly process what he’s hearing.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 23, 2022
Simlish, by contrast, is strung together with round, funny noises; emotional garbles; an uncannily human sound.
From The Verge ● Feb. 7, 2020
Raising money from one industry garbles your message on all.
From Salon ● Jul. 29, 2019
His figure grows staticky and his voice garbles.
From "The Last Cuentista" by Donna Barba Higuera
The group exhibition “To Share a Stomach” is a bit like the children’s game Telephone, in which a phrase, whispered from person to person, inevitably comes out a bit garbled.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 20, 2026
You’re on Zoom, meeting with colleagues or catching up with a friend or trying to nail a job interview, when it happens: a freeze, garbled audio, a blank screen.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 18, 2026
The anchor offered a garbled 90-second monologue that credited and blamed both sides — if it said anything at all.
From Salon ● Jan. 10, 2026
Still, the October and November employment estimates are sure to be garbled by the deferred resignations of federal employees.
From MarketWatch ● Dec. 15, 2025
Her words were garbled, like she was talking underwater, but I finally understood.
From "Chains" by Laurie Halse Anderson
It uses a different mechanism than the Merck drug, which disables the virus by garbling its genome and has raised concerns about its potential to cause mutations in people’s cells.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 5, 2021
Oppressively mirthless, “Outlaws” can nevertheless be enjoyed, after a fashion, as a surreal tapestry of macho garbling.
From New York Times ● Jan. 31, 2019
On the twice-as-expensive and open-back Ether Flows, the same can sometimes sound like distortion or garbling.
From The Verge ● Jul. 30, 2018
Kaling keeps garbling her line – “It’s amazing what can happen when you accept the love that’s given to you” – and apologises.
From The Guardian ● Mar. 15, 2018
Later editions of her Surinam book were needlessly reorganized according to different classification systems, garbling and misrepresenting her findings.
From "The Girl Who Drew Butterflies: How Maria Merian's Art Changed Science" by Joyce Sidman
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
