the.com/maul
What a mob does to a plan the moment it meets reality.
means To batter, claw, and tear at something (or someone) with rough, heavy violence — crushing it through sheer force rather than precision.
from From Old French 'mail' or 'mal,' meaning a heavy hammer or mallet, which traces back to Latin 'malleus' (hammer) — the same root that gives us 'malleable.' The word started as the name for a blunt, heavy weapon used to crush, then slid into a verb for the crushing itself. The leap from 'hammer' to 'bear mauling a hiker' is really just the tool's brutality outliving the tool.
- origin
- from Latin malleus, meaning hammer
- rugby term
- players bound together fighting for the ball
- vs mangle
- maul implies claws, mangle implies machinery
- everyday use
- critics mauled the film before it opened