gnarl

English

A gnarled tree trunk.

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -ɑː(r)l

Etymology 1

Back-formation from gnarled.

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

• gnarly

Translations

knot in wood

• French: noeud (fr) m (du bois)
• Greek: όζος (el) (ózos) m, ρόζος (el) (rózos) m

• Italian: nodo (it) m (di albero)
• Russian: сучок (ru) (sučok) m

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

to knot

to snarl

• Finnish: murista (fi)

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.