Intertwined

How to spell intertwined

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce intertwined

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does intertwined mean?

1. verbTwisted, woven, or closely connected together so that the parts are hard to separate.

Intertwined in a sentence

• The climbing roses were so tightly intertwined that the gardener could not tell one plant from another.

• The careers of the two founders became deeply intertwined over thirty years of business.

Where does intertwined come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word joins the Latin prefix inter-, meaning 'between' or 'among', to the older English verb twine. Twine itself descends from the Old English noun twin, which named a double thread or two-ply yarn, and that in turn traces back to the same Germanic root as the number two, since twisting two strands together is exactly what twine describes. By the medieval period twine had become a verb meaning to twist or wind strands around one another, and attaching inter- in the late sixteenth century produced 'intertwine', literally to twist things together between each other. The figurative sense, describing lives, stories, or interests that are closely bound up with one another, grew naturally out of that physical image of woven threads. The spelling trap is the quiet inter- prefix and the silent way the two t sounds run together, plus the unexpected 'wine' hiding in the middle.

How the word is built

• inter- (between, among)
• twine (from Old English twin: a double or twisted thread)
• -ed (past participle/adjective suffix)