Tangle

How to spell tangle

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce tangle

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tangle mean?

1. verbTo twist or knot together into a confused mass, or to become caught up in something.
2. nounA confused, knotted mass, or a complicated and confusing situation.

Tangle in a sentence

• verb

  Long hair will tangle quickly in the wind unless you tie it back.

• noun

  The necklace chains had become a hopeless tangle in her jewellery box.

• verb

  Loose cables tend to tangle at the bottom of the drawer.

• noun

  The paperwork turned into a legal tangle that took months to resolve.

Where does tangle come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

Tangle entered English in the late 1300s from a Scandinavian source, related to the Swedish dialect word taggla, meaning 'to disorder' or 'to entangle', and to similar Old Norse forms describing seaweed and matted growth. The earliest English uses appear in the form tangilen or tagilen, describing things caught and held fast, as fish are caught in a net. The sense narrowed over time to the familiar idea of threads, hair, or rope twisting into a knotted, confused mass, and from there grew the figurative meaning of being caught up in a complicated or quarrelsome situation. In some northern English and Scots dialects 'tangle' even survives as a name for long ribbon-like seaweed, a reminder of the word's coastal Scandinavian roots. The spelling is mercifully phonetic, with the soft -gle ending shared by everyday relatives like 'jangle', 'mangle', and 'dangle'.

How the word is built

• tangle (single root of Scandinavian origin; no separable prefix or suffix)