From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishmutilatemu‧ti‧late /ˈmjuːtəleɪt/ verb [transitive] 1 INJUREto severely and violently damage someone’s body, especially by cutting or removing part of it The prisoners had been tortured and mutilated. extra protection for mental patients who might mutilate themselves2 DAMAGEto damage or change something so much that it is completely spoiled The sculpture was badly mutilated in the late eighteenth century. —mutilation /ˌmjuːtəˈleɪʃən/ noun [countable, uncountable]→ See Verb table
Examples from the Corpus
mutilate• Mariama was the first woman in the village to stand up against the traditional practice and refused to have her daughters mutilated.• Police in Prague thought the pics were of real mutilated bodies.• Blood poured down from her mutilated face.• Two shells fell shortly before 9 p. m. that night, killing 74 people and injuring or mutilating nearly 200 more.• A police officer said his corpse was so charred and mutilated that it took more than an hour to identify it.• First, the sisters mutilate their feet to make the slipper fit.• The third group includes patients who mutilate themselves, usually in the context of a serious psychiatric illness.• With other mutilated veterans in Rumania, later, he had been thrown from a moving train.Origin mutilate (1500-1600) Latin past participle of mutilare, from mutilus “mutilated” 