gnarl

English

A gnarled tree trunk.

Pronunciation

  • Rhymes: -ɑː(r)l

Etymology 1

Back-formation from gnarled.[1]

Noun

gnarl (plural gnarls)

  1. A knot in wood; a large or hard knot, or a protuberance with twisted grain, on a tree.
  2. Something resembling a knot in wood, such as in stone or limbs.
  3. (mathematics) The average value of the magnitude squared of the curl of a vector field over a continuous path that is tangent to the vector field at every point. In mathematical notation, gnarl is represented by the lowercase Greek letter ξ.
Derived terms
Translations

Verb

gnarl (third-person singular simple present gnarls, present participle gnarling, simple past and past participle gnarled)

  1. (transitive) To knot or twist something.
Translations

Adjective

gnarl

  1. Gnarled, knotty, twisted.

Etymology 2

Onomatopoeia

Verb

gnarl (third-person singular simple present gnarls, present participle gnarling, simple past and past participle gnarled)

  1. (intransitive) To snarl or growl; to gnar.
    • Shakespeare
      And wolves are gnarling who shall gnaw thee first.
Translations

References

  1. ↑ “gnarled” in Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary, 2001–2018.
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