Dictionary

disentangle en · VERB

Pronunciation

• (Southern-England) audio
• [ˌdɪsɪnˈtæŋɡəɫ]

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *dwóh₁ ▲ Proto-Indo-European *trísinflu. Proto-Indo-European *d(w)is- Proto-Italic *dis- Latin dis- Old French des-bor. ▲ Latin dis-bor. Middle English dis- English dis- Middle English entanglen English entangle English disentangle From dis- + entangle.

Meanings

1. (transitive) To free something from entanglement; to extricate or unknot.
   • In my own opinion, “criminal religious movements” (CRMs) is a more accurate and useful category than “cults.” It uses, although selectively, elements from the criminological tradition. It avoids the word “cult” and tries to disentangle the category from both the folk psychology of brainwashing and the politics of “extremism” in theology. 2023 March 29, Beatriz Caiuby Labate, Clancy Cavnar, Religious Freedom and the Global Regulation of Ayahuasca, Taylor & Francis, →ISBN:
   • I had to disentangle him from his own shoelaces.
2. (transitive) To unravel; to separate into discrete components or units.
   • It is often hard to distinguish word frequency effects from age-of-acquisition effects: People are especially fast at processing the words they learned earliest, and these words tend to be the most frequent. We can disentangle the two with words that are learned early but are relatively infrequent (such as fairytale words like dragon). 2025, Edward A. F. Gibson, “Preliminaries: Components of Language Structure” (chapter 2), in Syntax: A Cognitive Approach, MIT Press, →DOI, →ISBN, page 29:
   • This overlapping is reflective of hybrid languages, where certain features (phonetic, orthographic, semantic, syntactic) are also difficult to disentangle. 2018, James Lambert, “A multitude of ‘lishes’: The nomenclature of hybridity”, in English World-Wide, page 10:
3. (intransitive) To become free or untangled.

Forms

Deriveds

disentangler

Relateds

tangle

Synonyms

untangle · unsnarl · untangle · disentangle · unweave · feeze · unravel · unsnarl · tease out

Translations (28)

fr démêler (extricate — see also untangle) · el ξεμπλέκω (extricate — see also untangle) · el ξεμπερδεύω (extricate — see also untangle) · mi ui (extricate — see also untangle) · pl odplatać (extricate — see also untangle) · it sbrogliare (extricate — see also untangle) · pl rozplątać (extricate — see also untangle) · pt desembaraçar (extricate — see also untangle) · ru высвобождать (extricate — see also untangle) · ca desembullar (extricate — see also untangle) · pl rozplątywać (extricate — see also untangle) · mi wete (extricate — see also untangle) · la extrīcō (extricate — see also untangle) · fi irrottaa (extricate — see also untangle) · bg размотавам (extricate — see also untangle) · oc desnosar (extricate — see also untangle) · te చిక్కుదీయు (extricate — see also untangle) · ru выпутывать (extricate — see also untangle) · ru распутывать (extricate — see also untangle) · it districare (extricate — see also untangle) · pl odpleść (extricate — see also untangle) · bg разплитам (extricate — see also untangle) · ru распутаться (extricate — see also untangle) · ru распутываться (extricate — see also untangle) · oc destrenar (extricate — see also untangle) · it disimbrogliare (extricate — see also untangle) · es desenredar (extricate — see also untangle) · fi vapauttaa (extricate — see also untangle)