Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To extricate from entanglement or involvement; free. See Synonyms at extricate.
- v. To clear up or resolve (a plot, for example); unravel.
- v. To become free of entanglement.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To free from entanglement; extricate from a state of involvement, disorder, or confusion: as, to disentangle a skein of thread, a mass of cordage, a set of accounts, or the affairs of a bankrupt firm.
- To loose from that in or by which anything is entangled; extricate from whatever involves, perplexes, embarrasses, or confuses; disengage: as, to disentangle an object from a mass of twisted cord; to disentangle one's self from business, from political affairs, or from the cares and temptations of life.
Wiktionary
- v. transitive To free something from entanglement; to extricate or unknot
- v. transitive To unravel a mystery etc
- v. intransitive To become free or untangled
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To free from entanglement; to release from a condition of being intricately and confusedly involved or interlaced; to reduce to orderly arrangement; to straighten out.
- v. To extricate from complication and perplexity; disengage from embarrassing connection or intermixture; to disembroil; to set free; to separate.
WordNet 3.0
- v. smoothen and neaten with or as with a comb
- v. free from involvement or entanglement
- v. extricate from entanglement
- v. release from entanglement of difficulty
- v. separate the tangles of
Etymologies
- dis- + entangle (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Kennedy-Carter is arguably a better example, but even that is very hard to disentangle from the Iran hostage situation.”
“In fact, the mechanism by which Martin introduces the De Lillo comparison — the Guardian review quote — is a real misjudgement in this respect, I’d say, planting the idea firmly in the reader’s head of strange style being “hard to disentangle from the copy-editing errors”.”
“The share sale, however, "will go a long way toward helping AIG disentangle" from government ownership, he adds.”
The Wall Street Journal: Luck, Price Rescue Stock of an AIG Prized Asset
“We experience the good and the bad tangled together, and because we are participants in this entanglement, not cool observers, it's all but impossible to disentangle good from bad.”
The Huffington Post: Deepak Chopra: Beyond Belief: Sam Harris Imagines a "Moral Landscape"
“If you fear he will hurt himself -- or you -- then enlist the help of a psychotherapist to disentangle yourself as safely as possible.”
The Washington Post: Carolyn Hax: Boyfriend reacts to breakup with threats
“The notion that the heavy hands of government might disentangle the delicate stands of this Gordian knot seems very far-fetched.”
The Huffington Post: David Katz, M.D.: Abortion, on Middle Ground
“As scholar Valerie Bunce noted in the context of postcommunist Eastern Europe, liberalization helps to "disentangle political power from economic resources and thereby constrain the state, empower society and create competitive political and economic hierarchies.”
“Now is a good time for journalists to reassess their coverage of climate change, weed out any bias from their reporting strategies, do what they can to disentangle politics from science, and be more aggressive about covering what many scientists, business figures, policymakers, and activists think is the most important climate story of this still-new millennium.”
UK Met office pushes reset button on CRU data. - Moe_Lane’s blog - RedState
“So when it comes to assessing the reasons for the teams' turnaround in fortunes, it's hard to disentangle the importance of conditions from England's inability to grasp the rhythms of the 50-over game.”
The Wall Street Journal: Both India, England Struggle on Foreign Soil
“So a search on "monitor data usage" gives you a mix of apps whose quality is difficult to disentangle; this is the same problem that Apple has with the App Store only on an even bigger scale.”
The Guardian: Google shows off Honeycomb, 'built entirely for tablet': can it beat iPad 2?
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘disentangle’.
-
Undo
A list of terms that denote separating one thing from another, or deconstructing a thing into its parts or to a former state. E.g., untie, divorce, unscramble.
untie, divorce, unscramble, disunite, disjoin, undo, separate, disassemble, uncouple, unhitch, disassociate, disaffiliate and 185 more...
-
Personal Vocabulary List
All my favourite words that I come across!
veritable, incongruence, rigamorole, letcherous, revolting, repulsive, reputrid, rapatious, forays, guise, placate, paradigm and 1162 more...
-
Misc. Words.
Words I like to use, words I like but may forget.
corrosion, astonish, solace, ferment, continuum, kinesthetic, permeate, repose, caprice, cardinal, discourse, surrender and 610 more...
-
sionnach's Words
contumely, fomite, holmgang, poltroon, eleemosynary, obsidian, nugatory, grindcore, felch, recrudescent, pyx, parenteral and 3271 more...
-
SAT Words Appearing More Than Once on...
A list of 166 words that have appeared more than once on official SAT exams. Based on Gruber's SAT Word Master list.
abolish, ameliorate, ambulatory, ambivalent, acquiesce, affirmation, atrophy, anchor, amity, amass, accent, abridge and 154 more...
-
use•ful
palmary, glossolalia, bothum, high-proof, synesthesia, odious, autochthonous, yawp, mordacious, dynamo, dishevel, titely and 414 more...
-
Words
Just another sorting device.
oneupsmanship, surpassing, oak gall, transformational, carriage return, riddle me this, pilling, logger, steno, horehound drops, reft, gammaglobulin and 109 more...
-
all the angles
and sides
rangle, fangle, fingle-fangle, bangle, dangle, gangle, jangle, mangle, tangle, wangle, wrangle, brangle and 82 more...
-
DisenDat
disengage, disenfranchise, disentangle, disenchant, disenable, disenroll, disentitle, disendow, disentail, disencumber, disentwine, disentrance and 23 more...
-
Words that go better with beer
Solid, reliable words that make waking up after a long night a little more bearable.
synapse, castile, hops, debauchery, paradoxical, dosh, paradigm, maelstrom, saluki, laconic, prolix, callow and 15 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for disentangle.
bilby "I do not wish to be insulting, but I firmly believe that if you took an average tow-line, and stretched it out straight across the middle of a field, and then turned your back on it for thirty seconds, that, when you looked round again, you would find that it had got itself altogether in a heap in the middle of the field, and had twisted itself up, and tied itself into knots, and lost its two ends, and become all loops; and it would take you a good half-hour, sitting down there on the grass and swearing all the while, to disentangle it again."
- Jerome K. Jerome, 'Three Men in a Boat'. Aug 27, 2009