Emily Dickinson Lexicon

MU'TI-LATE, v.t. [L. mutilo, probably from the root of meto, to cut off; Fr. mutiler; It. mutilare.]

1. To cut off a limb or essential part of an animal body. To cut off the hand or foot is to mutilate the body or the person.
2. To cut or break off, or otherwise separate any important part, as of a statue or building. – Encyc.
3. To retrench, destroy or remove any material part, so as to render the thing imperfect; as, to mutilate the poems of Homer or the orations of Cicero. Among the mutilated poets of antiquity, there is none whose fragments are so beautiful as those of Sappho. – Addison.