tangle

English

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ˈtæŋ.ɡəl/
  • Audio (US)(file)
  • Rhymes: -æŋɡəl

Etymology 1

From Middle English tanglen, probably of North Germanic origin, compare Swedish taggla (“to disorder”), Old Norse þǫngull, þang (“tangle; seaweed”), see Etymology 2 below.

Verb

tangle (third-person singular simple present tangles, present participle tangling, simple past and past participle tangled)

  1. (intransitive) to become mixed together or intertwined
    Her hair was tangled from a day in the wind.
  2. (intransitive) to be forced into some kind of situation
  3. (intransitive) to enter into an argument, conflict, dispute, or fight
    Don't tangle with someone three times your size.
    He tangled with the law.
  4. (transitive) to mix together or intertwine
  5. (transitive) to catch and hold
    • Milton
      tangled in amorous nets
    • Crashaw
      When my simple weakness strays, / Tangled in forbidden ways.
Synonyms
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Translations
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.

Noun

tangle (plural tangles)

  1. A tangled twisted mass.
  2. A complicated or confused state or condition.
    • 2013 August 3, “Boundary problems”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847:
      Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too. GDP measures the total value of output in an economic territory. Its apparent simplicity explains why it is scrutinised down to tenths of a percentage point every month.
    I tried to sort through this tangle and got nowhere.
  3. An argument, conflict, dispute, or fight.
  4. (mathematics) A region of the projection of a knot such that the knot crosses its perimeter exactly four times.
  5. A form of art which consists of sections filled with repetitive patterns.
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Translations

Etymology 2

Of Scandinavian origin; compare Norwegian tongul, Faroese tongul, Icelandic þöngull.

Noun

tangle (plural tangles)

  1. Any large type of seaweed, especially a species of Laminaria.
    • 1849, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam, 10:
      Than if with thee the roaring wells / Should gulf him fathom-deep in brine; / And hands so often clasped in mine, / Should toss with tangle and with shells.
    • 1917, Kenneth Macleod (editor) "The Road to the Isles", in Songs of the Hebrides:
      You've never smelled the tangle o' the Isles.
  2. (in the plural) An instrument consisting essentiallly of an iron bar to which are attached swabs, or bundles of frayed rope, or other similar substances, used to capture starfishes, sea urchins, and other similar creatures living at the bottom of the sea.

Further reading

  • tangle in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
  • tangle in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911
  • tangle at OneLook Dictionary Search

Anagrams

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