Word of the Day:

"Noisy environments and interruptions garbled the audio or led to the services transcribing voices of people in the office who weren’t in our meeting." — Danielle Abril, The Washington Post, 17 Aug. 2023

More example sentences

Garble is a word with a spicy history, and we're not just saying that to curry favor with gastronomes. It is presumed that this word was passed from Arabic to Mediterranean Europe through trade in Eastern spices, and was first introduced into English from the Anglo-French verb garbeler, used for the action of sifting out impurities—such as dust, dirt, husks, etc.—from spices. In the 15th century, the English garble carried this same meaning as well as "to cull," i.e., to sort or pick out the best parts of something. If these origins seem curious given garble’s now more common meanings of "to so alter or distort as to create a wrong impression" and "to cause to be unclear or confusing; to introduce error into," consider that one way of garbling someone’s story is to take bits and pieces out of context.