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tangle

[tang-guhl]

Example Sentences Origin

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verb (used with object)

to bring together into a mass of confusedly interlaced or intertwisted threads, strands, or other like parts; snarl.

to involve in something that hampers, obstructs, or overgrows: The bushes were tangled with vines.

to catch and hold in or as if in a net or snare.

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verb (used without object)

to be or become tangled.

Informal. to come into conflict; fight or argue: I don't want to tangle with him over the new ruling.

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Tangle is one of our favorite verbs.

So is absquatulate. Does it mean:

to bark; yelp.

to flee; abscond:

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noun

a tangled condition or situation.

a tangled or confused mass or assemblage of something.

a confused jumble: a tangle of contradictory statements.

Informal. a conflict; disagreement: He got into a tangle with the governor.

Origin:
1300–50; Middle English tangilen, tagilen to entangle < Scandinavian; compare Swedish (dial.) taggla to disarrange

Related forms

tan·gle·ment, noun

tan·gler, noun

tan·gly, adverb

Synonyms
8. snarl, net, labyrinth, maze.

Example Sentences

The place is a tangle of lips and tongues and hands, all groping and exploring.

Between the tangle of legs, one could see a young woman's head on the floor, under an officer's knee.

He swiftly set to work to straighten out the tangle and give the firm's best bits some breathing room.

EXPAND

The place is a tangle of lips and tongues and hands, all groping and exploring.

Between the tangle of legs, one could see a young woman's head on the floor, under an officer's knee.

He swiftly set to work to straighten out the tangle and give the firm's best bits some breathing room.

Also found were an ax with a copper blade, two arrows, and a tangle of string.

Dawn mists cling to the leaves of ginger and mango trees erupting out of a tangle of ferns, rattan and yam vines.

The tangle of dark and sinuous shapes was really a quart of unusually.

Look at it on a map and you get lost in a tangle of islands and inlets, each worthy of weeks' exploration.

Worse, those cords tend to slip and slide onto the floor beneath where they immediately multiply and tangle.

Her eyes are closed, and a contented smile runs across her faceShe is standing amid a tangle of wires.

And straight hair will tangle on its own quite nicely, if you encourage it to.

Extricating themselves from this tangle can be tough.

Certain activities with obviously positive aspects, such as skiing and winter tourism, have created a tangle of drawbacks.

The strands may loop and twist, but they never cross and tangle.

Every year paleontologists must carefully navigate the tangle of laws and restrictions on fossil collecting.

The new self-coiling hoses won't tangle or kink, and they store neatly, but they aren't flawless.

It's not the coffee cups and papers that bother me, though, but the tangle.

Read with a suitably cold eye, they also remind us that personal history and myth want to tangle and merge.

It was hoped these would tangle the virus particles.

Cheetahs are usually too smart to tangle with hyenas.

The tangle of tubing and high-vacuum equipment is used for surface science, which is.

If this great tangle of brick and steel and cement and tun-.

Many women-and indeed many men-feel that they are caught in an ever-tightening tangle of commitments.

The top is a tangle of branches and is virtually impossible to see into from the ground.

Who the true inventor of the automobile actually was remains clouded in the murk of history and a tangle of bureaucracy.

From a global economic perspective, a tangle of such deals is far inferior to freer multilateral trade.

The tangle of brush and trees forms a close-packed array of air breathing leaves.

It has an arm, cameras and laser scanners for eyes, and a tangle of electrical intestines stuffed into its base.

Nor is there a meaningful tidying-up of the tangle of federal regulatory agencies.

We seemed to be hiking through a limitless tangle of branches and leaves.

Stows conveniently in a self-contained package, despite the tangle of cords it uses.

Our first appetiser comprises a mounded tangle of cold quivering jellyfish surrounded by half-moons of cured pork.

Creating bright-line definitions of legitimate personal use and illegitimate commercial abuse is likely to become a tangle.

We were witnessing a sort of adolescent acting out as the students tried to tangle publicly with a writer they admired.

They tangle and twist, knotting together into a serpentine convolution of wire and plastic.

His head, a tangle of gray-streaked curls, rests on a pile of pillows.

No more cables connecting the whole thing that tangle a soldier up.

The deal has been a bureaucratic and corporate tangle.

Next, gather the chute and fold it carefully, making sure not to tangle any strings.

In another is a white telescope dome and a gray tangle of poles used to observe the ionosphere's properties.

Naturalists tried to make sense of the tangle of data in different ways.

Too often music to your ears means a tangle of dangling cords and a case of bad hair.

COLLAPSE

Dictionary.com Unabridged

noun

any of several large seaweeds of the genus Laminaria.

Origin:
1530–40; < Scandinavian; compare Old Norse thǫngull strand of tangle, Norwegian tang

Link To tangle

Collins

World English Dictionary

tangle¹ (ˈtæŋɡ^əl)

—n
1.	a confused or complicated mass of hairs, lines, fibres, etc, knotted or coiled together
2.	a complicated problem, condition, or situation

—vb (often foll by with)
3.	to become or cause to become twisted together in a confused mass
4.	to come into conflict; contend: to tangle with the police
5.	(tr) to involve in matters which hinder or confuse: to tangle someone in a shady deal
6.	(tr) to ensnare or trap, as in a net

[C14 tangilen, variant of tagilen, probably of Scandinavian origin; related to Swedish dialect taggla to entangle]

'tanglement¹

—n

'tangler¹

—n

'tangly¹

—*adj*

tangle or tangle weed² (ˈtæŋɡ^əl)

—n
	alternative names (esp Scot) for oarweed

[C16: of Scandinavian origin: compare Danish tang seaweed]

tangle weed or tangle weed²

—n

[C16: of Scandinavian origin: compare Danish tang seaweed]

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
Cite This Source

Etymonline

Word Origin & History

tangle

mid-14c., nasalized variant of tagilen "to involve in a difficult situation, entangle," from a Scand. source (cf. dialectal Swed. taggla "to disorder," O.N. þongull "seaweed"). In ref. to material things, from c.1500. Meaning "to fight with" is Amer.Eng., first recorded 1928. The noun is first

EXPAND

recorded 1615, "a tangled condition." Tanglefoot (1859) was Western Amer.Eng. slang for "strong whiskey."

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"One story recounts that a Tennessean, after a single day in the then almost impenetrable tangle of cypress, briars, and canebreaks, pestered by myriads of mosquitoes, and bogged in the heavy gumbo mud, declared: "Arkansas is not part of the world for which Jesus Christ died—I want none of it.""

-Administration in the State of Arka

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