ENTANGLE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does entangle mean? 

• ENTANGLE (verb)
  The verb ENTANGLE has 2 senses:

1. entrap

2. twist together or entwine into a confusing mass

  Familiarity information: ENTANGLE used as a verb is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ENTANGLE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they entangle    ... he / she / it entangles   
Past simple: entangled   
Past participle: entangled   
-ing form: entangling   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Entrap

Classified under:

Verbs of being, having, spatial relations

Synonyms:

entangle; mire

Context example:

Our people should not be mired in the past

Hypernyms (to "entangle" is one way to...):

involve (engage as a participant)

Sentence frames:

Something ----s somebody
Something ----s something

Derivation:

entanglement (an intricate trap that entangles or ensnares its victim)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Twist together or entwine into a confusing mass

Classified under:

Verbs of touching, hitting, tying, digging

Synonyms:

entangle; mat; snarl; tangle

Context example:

The child entangled the cord

Hypernyms (to "entangle" is one way to...):

distort; twine; twist (form into a spiral shape)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "entangle"):

felt (mat together and make felt-like)

enmesh; ensnarl; mesh (entangle or catch in (or as if in) a mesh)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Something ----s something

Sentence example:

They entangle their hair

Antonym:

disentangle (extricate from entanglement)

 Context examples 

The girls came just in time; they held him fast and tried to free his beard from the line, but all in vain, beard and line were entangled fast together.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

She did not mean to have her own affections entangled again, and it would be incumbent on her to avoid any encouragement of his.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

But that my girl should be entangled in the same meshes which held me was more than I could suffer.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The study’s researchers estimated that approximately 11.1 billion plastic items are entangled on reefs across the Asia-Pacific region, which has 55.5 per cent of global coral reefs.

(Plastic debris linked to coral disease, death, SciDev.Net)

He was entangled by his own vanity, with as little excuse of love as possible, and without the smallest inconstancy of mind towards her cousin.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Electron microscopy showed that the microbes were entangled in beta-amyloid fibers extending from the surfaces of the fungal cells, suggesting an entrapment role for beta-amyloid.

(Alzheimer’s protein may have natural antibiotic role, NIH)

He found too late, in short, that he had entangled himself; and that precisely as he became fully satisfied of his not caring for Louisa at all, he must regard himself as bound to her, if her sentiments for him were what the Harvilles supposed.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

This message makes it even more essential that we should not lose an hour in letting Hilton Cubitt know how matters stand, for it is a singular and a dangerous web in which our simple Norfolk squire is entangled.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

One mast was broken short off, six or eight feet from the deck, and lay over the side, entangled in a maze of sail and rigging; and all that ruin, as the ship rolled and beat—which she did without a moment's pause, and with a violence quite inconceivable—beat the side as if it would stave it in.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Now that my memory goes back to the old place it would gladly linger, for every thread which I draw from the skein of the past brings out half a dozen others that were entangled with it.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)