mutilate

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. v. To deprive of a limb or an essential part; cripple.
2. v. To disfigure by damaging irreparably: mutilate a statue. See Synonyms at batter¹.
3. v. To make imperfect by excising or altering parts.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To cut off a limb or any important part of; deprive of any characteristic member, feature, or appurtenance, so as to disfigure; maim: as, to mutilate a body or a statue; to mutilate a tree or a picture.
2. Figuratively, to excise, erase, or expunge any important part from, so as to render incomplete or imperfect, as a record or a poem.
3. Synonyms Mutilate, Maim, Cripple, Mangle, Disfigure. Mutilate emphasizes the injury to completeness and to beauty: as, to mulilate a statue. Maim and cripple note the injury to the use of the members of the body, maim suggesting perhaps more of unsightliness, pain, and actual loss of members, and cripple more directly emphasizing the diminished power of action: as, crippled in the left arm. Mangle expresses a badly hacked or torn condition: as, a mangled finger or arm. Disfigure covers simply such changes of the external form as injure its appearance or beauty: one may be fearfully mangled in battle, so as to be disfigured for life, and yet finally escape being mutilated or maimed, or even crippled.
4. Mutilate, Garble, Misquote. To mutilate is to take parts of a thing, so as to leave it imperfect or incomplete; to garble is to take parts of a thing in such a way as to make them convey a false impression; to misquote is to quote incorrectly, whether intentionally or not: as, to mutilate a hymn; to garble a passage from an official report; to garble another's words; to misquote a text of Scripture. Garble has completely lost its primary meaning.
5. . Same as mutilated.
6. Specifically, deprived of hind limbs, as a cetacean or a sirenian. See Mutilata.
7. n. A member of the Mutilata; a cetacean or a sirenian.

Wiktionary

1. v. To physically harm as to impair use, notably by cutting off or otherwise disabling a vital part, such as a limb.
2. v. To destroy beyond recognition.
3. v. figuratively To render imperfect.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. adj. Deprived of, or having lost, an important part; mutilated.
2. adj. (Zoöl.) Having finlike appendages or flukes instead of legs, as a cetacean.
3. n. (Zoöl.) A cetacean, or a sirenian.
4. v. To cut off or remove a limb or essential part of; to maim; to cripple; to disfigure; to hack
5. v. To destroy or remove a material part of, so as to render imperfect.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. alter so as to make unrecognizable
2. v. destroy or injure severely
3. v. destroy or injure severely