Dictionary

intertwingle en · VERB

Pronunciation

• (Southern-England) audio
• [-ɾəɹ-] (General-American)
• /ˌɪntəˈtwɪŋɡl̩/ (Received-Pronunciation)
• /ˌɪntəɹˈtwɪŋɡ(ə)l/ (General-American)

Etymology

PIE word *h₁én Probably a blend of intertwine + intermingle. The word has apparently been coined independently several times: * It was used by the Indian author and translator Manmatha Nath Dutt (1855–1912) in an 1896 work: see the quotation. * It appears to have been used comically by Montgomery Gordon Rice of Bradley Polytechnic Institute in an April 1901 performance of Esmeralda: see the quotation. * It was used as a noun by the American-British author Henry James (1843–1916) as a nickname for a group of his Emmet female cousins who were painters; and also by the American artist John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) as a nickname for his 1900s genre paintings of his nieces, the Ormond sisters. Sargent was referring to the use of shawls as a motif, or the interchangeability of the models or their convoluted poses. (The American artist Jane Emmet de Glehn (1873–1961), one of Henry James’ “intertwingles”, was also a friend and model of Sargent’s.) * The word was used in the urban planning context by Tracy Augur in the 1950s (see the 1954 quotation), and adopted by others including Dennis O’Harrow. Sense 2 (“of documents, information, etc.: to interconnect or interrelate in a complex way”) was developed from its use in Computer Lib/Dream Machines (1974) by the American philosopher and sociologist Theodor Holm Nelson (born 1937): see the quotation.

Meanings

1. (informal, intransitive, rare) To confuse or entangle together; to enmesh, to muddle.
   • The Little Fire Engine. Even if Graham Greene had not come out from the anonymity of The Little Red Engine and signed it, this is surely the Book of the Year. Pathos and humour ‘inextricably intertwingled’. Charlie Chaplin would not have disowned it, and a much younger [Walt] Disney at his best would have envied it. 1950 December, “Children’s Books, Christmas, 1950. A Personal Choice of a Dozen. [book reviews]”, in The New Era in Home and School, volume 31, number 10, [London]: [New Education Fellowship], →OCLC, page 246:
   • The "inextricable intertwingling" of engineering and science and research and development is no better illustrated than in this example of the particle accelerators. 1965, Aerospace Medicine, volume 36, St. Paul, Minn.: Aerospace Medical Association, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 606, column 1:
   • Athletic benefit. Esmeralda a great success. [Montgomery Gordon] Rice gets the ring ceremony "intertwingled." 1901 June, “April”, in Polyscope, volume I, number 1, Peoria, Ill.: Bradley Polytechnic Institute, →OCLC:
   • Now, having descarded,^([sic – meaning discarded]) by virtue of the spirit of the lord of universe, the possessions resembling the city of the Gandharvas created by the illusive energy of God which naturally get intertwingled with (one's) soul; go I to seek the protection of Him. 1896, chapter IX, in Manmatha Nath Dutt, transl., A Prose English Translation of Srimadbhagavatam, book IX, Calcutta, West Bengal: […] H. C. Dass, […] [for] Manmatha Nath Dutt, →OCLC, page 37:
   • Such a magnetic matrix, plane, or array can function as a serial store. In a 1024-core square array, the X dimension could represent the 32 bit positions of a word and the Y dimension, 32 different words. […] This plane of 1024 cores, so far as organization is concerned, can be thought of as four 32 × 8 arrays intertwingled. 1963, Willis H[oward] Ware, “The Store”, in Digital Computer Technology and Design, volumes II (Circuits and Machine Design), New York, N.Y.; London: John Wiley and Sons, →OCLC, pages 12.52–12.53:
   • I was particularly attracted to her, not only because of her spontaneous eloquence but also because she recognised me as: ‘the gentleman who gets his words all intertwingled’. 1984, Stanley Unwin, Deep Joy: Master of the Sproken Word, Whitby, North Yorkshire: Caedmon of Whitby, →ISBN, page 139:
   • A writer in the Kansas City "Star" has discovered that there is a "Kansas language." […] To the Kansas list we beg to add a New Jersey word, "intertwingle"—as roots do in the soil. [1917 June 27, “By the Way”, in The Outlook, volume 116, New York, N.Y.: Outlook Co., →OCLC, page 344, column 3:
   • Fortunately, these objectives are not only compatible, but are, to use a popular Washington phrase, "inextricably intertwingled." 1958, News of the American Alumni Council, Washington, D.C.: American Alumni Council, →OCLC, page 9, column 2:
   • This is largely an accident of history, but it is also a natural concomitant of the need for coupling urban technological analysis and problem explorations with designed and concrete solutions to social, political, economic, and physical problems of urban areas expressed in physical terms as plans. The fact that all of these elements are, as Tracy Augur says, "inextricably intertwingled" makes for the complex job of the "generalist in planning," in contradistinction to the specialist, let us say, in school architecture, or hospital architecture, or residential architecture. 1954 October, Carl Feiss, “Out of School: City Planning Education as Related to Architectural Education”, in Progressive Architecture, volume XXXV, number 10, New York, N.Y.: Reinhold Publishing Corporation, →OCLC, archived from the original on 17 Apr 2024, page 174:
2. (informal, intransitive, rare) Of documents, information, etc.: to interconnect or interrelate in a complex way.
   • [A] book on Amazon is far more than the words between its covers. We can learn its cost and publisher; what other books the author has written; what readers think about the book; what other books those readers have bought; and we can keyword search the full text. Data and metadata intertwingle with patterns of purchase and use: […] 2005 September, Peter Morville, “Intertwingled”, in Simon St. Laurent, editor, Ambient Findability, Sebastopol, Calif.: O’Reilly Media, →ISBN, page 84:
   • But why should things be saved? Everything is deeply intertwingled. We save for knowledge and nostalgia, but what we thought was knowledge often turns to nostalgia, and nostalgia often brings us deeper insights that cut across our lives and very selves. 1974 March, Theodor H[olm] Nelson, “Dream Machines: New Freedoms through Computer Screens—a Minority Report [‘On Writing,’ a Paradigm of the Creative Process]”, in Computer Lib/Dream Machines, South Bend, Ind.: Theodor H. Nelson, published March 1977, →OCLC, page 98, column 2:
   • [John] Sheridan (2018) argues that the ‘intertwingling’ of records will become commonplace, and records will contextualise each other. 2020, Andrew Prescott, “Community Archives and the Health of the Internet”, in Simon Popple, Andrew Prescott, Daniel H. Mutibwa, editors, Communities, Archives and New Collaborative Practices (Connected Communities), Bristol; Chicago, Ill.: Policy Press, University of Bristol, →ISBN, part III (Disruptive and Counter Voices: The Community Turn), page 260:
   • This book, like the conference, is called Intertwingled. It’s a word that expresses a philosophical position about cross-connection. I said in Computer Lib, "Everything is deeply intertwingled." I meant that all subjects and issues are intertwined and intermingled. But intertwingled subjects are not what computers usually represent. From the beginning, people have set computers up to be hierarchical. […] Now, it's also a metaphysic to say, "everything is deeply intertwingled," since the sentence cannot be proven true or false. But it is computer science to say that we need to represent cross-connection, and I’m expressing a computer science opinion when I say that intertwingularity is a better form of representation—for everything—than hierarchy. 2015, Theodor Holm Nelson, “What Box?”, in Douglas R. Dechow, Daniele C. Struppa, editors, Intertwingled: The Work and Influence of Ted Nelson (History of Computing), Cham, Zug, Switzerland; Heidelberg, Baden-Württemburg: Springer Open, Springer International Publishing, →DOI, →ISBN, →ISSN, part IV (The Last Word), page 134:
   • Deeply intertwingled hypertext documents offer readers abundant choices, permitting reader and author to work together to dynamically reorganize the document to meet specific needs. 1991 February, Mark Bernstein, “Deeply Intertwingled Hypertext: The Navigation Problem Reconsidered”, in Technical Communication: Journal of the Society for Technical Communication, volume 38, number 1, Arlington, Va.: Society for Technical Communication, →ISSN, →JSTOR, →OCLC, executive summary, page 41:

Forms

Relateds

intertwingling · intertwingularity · intertwingled

Translations (1)

fi nivoutua (of documents, information, etc.: to interconnect or interrelate in a complex way)

wikipedia: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art · wikipedia: Yale University Press · wikipedia: Henry James · wikipedia: Little, Brown and Company · wikipedia: Jane Emmet de Glehn · wikipedia: John Singer Sargent · wikipedia: Computer Lib/Dream Machines · wikipedia: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston · wikipedia: Manmatha Nath Dutt