A verb of violent severance. In its most common usage it describes cutting something off with a blade — Peter slashing off an ear in Gethsemane (John 18:10, 18:26), Jesus's hyperbolic command to cut off a hand or foot that causes stumbling (Mark 9:43, 45), and sailors cutting away ropes to release the ship's boat (Acts 27:32). The Spanish glosses (cortaron, córtala) capture this sharp, decisive action. But in Galatians 5:12, Paul deploys the middle voice with biting sarcasm, wishing the circumcision agitators would go the whole way and castrate themselves — a rare rhetorical shock that the Spanish 'se mutilaran' translates with appropriate reflexive force.