tangle
Part of speech: verb
noun
Morphological type: simple
Topics: mathematics
medicine
sciences
Etymology: From Middle English tanglen, probably of North Germanic origin, compare Swedish taggla (“to disorder”), Old Norse þǫngull, þang (“tangle; seaweed”), see Etymology 2 below.
Inflected forms:
form: tangles
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: tangling
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: tangled
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: tangled
pos: verb
tags: past
form: tangles
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: To mix together or intertwine.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
gloss: To become mixed together or intertwined.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: Her hair was tangled from a day in the wind.
By the afternoon it seemed as if the storm had passed and that frost was setting in; but in the evening the wind rose to gale force, bringing telegraph poles down like skittles and tangling power and telephone lines.
gloss: To enter into an argument, conflict, dispute, or fight.
pos: verb
tags: figuratively
intransitive
examples: Don't tangle with someone three times your size.
He tangled with the law.
Compared to the last time they'd tangled with the U.S. Navy's carriers, the antiaircraft fire had been much, much more effective, even if the Wildcats hadn't done particularly well in their intercepts. They couldn't know it, of course, but the officer aboard Enterprise who'd recommended recarpeting the ship with 20-mm Oerlikons had, at least partially, been listened to, and the effect on the Japanese Navy's elite aircrews had been devastating.
After a few attempts at counseling, they separated in January 2015. Since then, they have tangled in the courts.
gloss: To catch and hold.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: tangled in amorous nets
When my simple weakness strays, / Tangled in forbidden ways.
This is a book about the potential for the reclamation, reform, and enlightened transformation of the most expansive elements of the liberal tradition— that social and economic justice remain tangled in liberalism's web of pretentious institutions and betrayed promises is the reason for this battle from within.
He spent the night at a friend's place unable to sleep and wondering how he got himself tangled in this mess.
Why else would she have tangled him in spells of illusion to get him to keep her company?
gloss: A tangled twisted mass.
pos: noun
gloss: A complicated or confused state or condition.
pos: noun
examples: I tried to sort through this tangle and got nowhere.
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.
gloss: An argument, conflict, dispute, or fight.
pos: noun
gloss: A region of the projection of a knot such that the knot crosses its perimeter exactly four times.
pos: noun
gloss: A paired helical fragment of tau protein found in a nerve cell and associated with Alzheimer's disease.
pos: noun
gloss: A form of art which consists of sections filled with repetitive patterns.
pos: noun
Synonyms: enmesh
ensnare
ensnarl
entangle
foul
implicate
imply
involve
mat
ravel
snarl
tangle
Antonyms: untangle
Derived words: tanglefish
tangle net
tanglesome
tangle-wrack
tau tangle
Translations: