View synonyms for loose end

loose end

noun

a part or piece left hanging, unattached, or unused:
Remind me to tack down that loose end on the stairway carpet.
an unsettled detail, as of a business matter:
The arrangements have been made, except for a few loose ends.

loose end

First recorded in 1540–50

at loose ends, in an uncertain or unsettled situation or position: Also at a loose end.
Ever since leaving the company, he's been at loose ends.

“A loose end is one way that Isaac put it,” said Burnett at his guilty-plea hearing.

Burnett said that Aguigui called the killings a “loose end.”

He passed a miserable week, unable to work, at a loose end in London during the height of the season.

And like the young professional man at a loose end, I made a pretence of looking through papers.

Then I sat down at a loose end, very much like a young professional man, doctor or estate-agent, waiting for the next client.

The string's tangled up about as bad as it was before, but I believe you're gettin' hold of the loose end.

The loose end of the tracing line, about an inch thick, was hanging near me.

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

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