Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Tangled |
TangledAdjective1. In a confused mass; "pushed back her tangled hair"; "the tangled ropes". 2. Highly involved or intricate; "the Byzantine tax structure"; "convoluted legal language"; "convoluted reasoning"; "intricate needlework"; "an intricate labyrinth of refined phraseology"; "the plot was too involved"; "a knotty problem"; "got his way by labyrinthine maneuvering"; "Oh, what a tangled web we weave"- Sir Walter Scott; "tortuous legal procedures"; "tortuous negotiations lasting for months". Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "tangled" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1258. (references) |
Synonyms: TangledSynonyms: convoluted (adj), intricate (adj), involved (adj), knotty (adj), labyrinthine (adj), tortuous (adj). (additional references) |
| Antonym: untangled (adj). (additional references) |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Complexity | Noun: complexity; complexness; Adjective: complexus; complication, implication; intricacy, intrication; perplexity; network, labyrinth; wilderness, jungle; involution, raveling, entanglement; coil; (convolution); sleave, tangled skein, knot, Gordian knot, wheels within wheels; kink, gnarl, knarl; webwork. |
Adjective: gnarled, knarled. complex, complexed; intricate, complicated, perplexed, involved, raveled, entangled, knotted, tangled, inextricable; irreducible. | |
Difficulty | Grope in the dark, lose one's way, weave a tangled web, walk among eggs. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Tangled |
| English words defined with "tangled": briar, brier, brier patch, brierpatch, bullbrier, Byzantine ♦ catbrier, convoluted ♦ disentanglement, disentangler ♦ entangled, extrication ♦ greenbrier ♦ horsebrier ♦ intricate, involved ♦ knotted, knotty ♦ labyrinthine ♦ matted ♦ rootbound ♦ Smilax rotundifolia, snarled, snarly ♦ tangle, tangle orchid, tortuous ♦ unmade, unraveler, unraveller, unsnarling, untangled, untangling. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "tangled": anastomosing stream, aspect-oriented programming ♦ Blind Hedge, braided stream ♦ Canal ♦ drying-machine operator ♦ frison ♦ Hair ♦ LEASE PICKER ♦ moorlog ♦ NARROW-FABRIC CALENDERER ♦ SKEIN-YARN DRIER, spaghetti code, STAINING-MACHINE OPERATOR, STAPLE-PROCESSING-MACHINE OPERATOR, steam-drier operator ♦ TARRING-MACHINE OPERATOR ♦ WINDER OPERATOR, AUTOMATIC ♦ yarn-dry-room worker, YARN-MERCERIZER-OPERATOR HELPER. (references) |
| Domain | Usage | |
Lyrics | My heart's all tangled up (I Get Weak; performing artist: Belinda Carlisle) The spider web is tangled up with me (Trouble; performing artist: Coldplay) They are tangled up in the light (The Finer Things; performing artist: Steve Winwood) | |
Movie/TV Titles | A Witch's Tangled Hare (1959) Tangled Travels (1944) The Tangled Angler (1941) Tangled Television (1940) The Tangled Web (1916) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title | ||
Books |
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Theater & Movies | |||
Music |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | A Northern Gannet, somewhat north of its normal range, tangled in fishing line and drowned. Credit: America's Coastlines. |  | Lobster tangled in a gillnet intended to capture cod and other groundfish. Homarus americanus. Credit: National Undersea Research Program (NURP). |
 | All tangled up and someplace to go. Credit: Library of Congress. |  | The darktown tally ho, - tangled up. Credit: Library of Congress. |
 | We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills, and winding streams with tangled growth as wild ... Credit: Library of Congress. | ||
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
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| "Tangled Hunter" by Dennis Bale Commentary: "A huntsman spider tangled in cobwebs sits in a baseball glove." | "Cables" by Lorena Molinari Commentary: "Tangled cables." |
Source: photographs selected by the editor, with permission from the photographers. | |
| Title | Author | Quote |
Sylvie and Bruno Concluded | Carroll, Lewis | The whole skein of thought was tangled worse than ever |
Les Miserables | Hugo, Victor | She could hardly think, her ideas were like a tangled skein in her brain |
Grapes of Wrath | Steinbeck, John | And the dog, a blot of blood and tangled, burst intestines, kicked slowly in the road |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Health | The characteristic kinky hair is stubby, tangled, sparse, or steely and is easily broken. (references) | |
He found abnormal clumps (now called amyloid plaques) and tangled bundles of fibers (now called neurofibrillary tangles). (references) | ||
Economic History | Indonesia | Indonesia has a tangled regulatory and legal environment where most firms, both foreign and domestic, attempt to avoid the justice system. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Tangled" is generally used as an adjective (general or positive) -- approximately 62.90% of the time. "Tangled" is used about 310 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Adjective (general or positive) | 62.9% | 195 | 21,939 |
| Lexical Verb (past tense) | 19.68% | 61 | 43,149 |
| Lexical Verb (past participle) | 16.45% | 51 | 47,619 |
| Noun (proper) | 0.97% | 3 | 202,518 |
| Total | 100.00% | 310 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expressions using "tangled": become tangled ♦ get tangled ♦ get tangled up ♦ tangled business ♦ tangled hair ♦ tangled skein ♦ tangled suspension lines ♦ tangled thing ♦ weave a tangled web. Additional references. | |
| Hyphenated Usage | |
Beginning with "tangled": tangled-up. | |
Ending with "tangled": dream-tangled, new-tangled, vine-tangled. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "tangled"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Arabic | معقد (busy, complicate, complicated, convoluted, deep, difficult, doctrinarian, entangled, inextricable, intricacy, intricate, invalid, involute, knotted, knotty, nasty, perplexing, snarled, sophisticated, tangly, tricky). (various references) | |
Chinese | 缠结 (Entanglement, snarl, tangle, Tangling), 紊 (grade, involved, level, rank, step). (various references) | |
Czech | spletený. (various references) | |
Danish | sammenfiltret strå (tangled straw), sammenfiltret garn (tangled yarn), sammenfiltrede faldskærmsliner (tangled suspension lines). (various references) | |
Dutch | verward garen (tangled yarn), verwaarde dragglijnen (tangled suspension lines), gelegerd stro (tangled straw). (various references) | |
Finnish | takkuinen (shaggy), sekava (confused, incoherent, involved, muddled), sekainen (confused, mixed, muddled, muddy). (various references) | |
French | suspentes emmêlées (tangled suspension lines), récolte tourbillonnée (tangled straw), fil entremêlé (tangled yarn). (various references) | |
German | wirr (chaotic, confused, crazed, disordered, garbled, helter-skelter, incoherent, incoherently, light-headed, mazily, mazy, weird, wild, woolly, woozily), verwirrte sich. (various references) | |
Greek | νήμα μπλεγμένο (tangled yarn), περίφροντις συλλογή (tangled straw), εμπλεγμένα σχοινία ανάρτησης (tangled suspension lines), τεταραγμένη συλλογή (tangled straw). (various references) | |
Hebrew | מסובך (complex, complicated, intricate, involved, knotty, sophisticated, twisted). (various references) | |
Hungarian | összegubancolódott. (various references) | |
Indonesian | ganjat (have a cramp), awut-awutan (chaotic, haphazard, tousled). (various references) | |
Italian | ingarbugliato (kinky, knotty, matted). (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | やっ付ける (after a little while, complex, complicated, dangerous, indiscriminately, presently, puzzling, skips-most-stations Touhoku-line shinkansen, to beat). (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | ややこしい (complex, complicated, puzzling). (various references) | |
Korean | 엉키게 하는. (various references) | |
Manx | tramman (amiss, elder, entangled, foul, foul as rope), fud y cheilley (at variance, chaotic, confused, confusing, confusion, dishevelled, disorder, disordered, embarrassed, flustered, mixed up, muddle, muddled, perplexed, topsy-turvy). (various references) | |
Pig Latin | angledtay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | fio emaranhado (tangled yarn), cordas de suspensão entrelaçadas (tangled suspension lines). (various references) | |
Romanian | complicat (complicated, daedal, deep, difficult, elaborate, intricate, intricately, obscure, perplex, perplexed, tricky, turbid), încurcat (daedal, difficult, embarrassed, foul, intricate, involved, matted, perplexed, perplexedly, puzzling, tortuous, winding), încâlcit (addle, intricate, intricately, matted, perplexed, puzzling). (various references) | |
Russian | запутывать запутанный (entangled). (various references) | |
Spanish | greñudo (disheveled, dishevelled), enredado (entangled, implicated, involved), enmarañado (beetle, complicated, inextricable, involved, matted, messy, rambling, shaggy, tousled), difícil y casi imposible, complicado (anfractuous, complex, complicated, compound, convolute, elaborate, involved, knotted, knotty, many-sided, perplexing, queasy). (various references) | |
Swedish | trasslig (entangled, perplexed), tovig (shaggy), tilltrasslad (foul, inextricable). (various references) | |
Thai | ซึ่งพันกันยุ่ง, ซึ่งสับสน (bemused, muzzy). (various references) | |
Turkish | karmakarışıklık (a dickens of a mess, ballup, cock up, confusion worse confounded, intricacy, mess, mishmash, mixed bag, skein, spaghetti, tangled skein, whirl), karışık saç (mop, shock, tangled hair, thatch), karışık şey (complex, farrago, hash, hodgpodge, melange, mess, muddle, olio, tangled thing), dolaşmak (air oneself, bat around, be afloat, become tangled, browse around, circuit, circulate, float, flow, go about, go around, go for a jaunt, go for a stroll, go for a walk, go on a jaunt, hike, itinerate, jaunt, jauntiness, kink, knot, look round, mat, mosey, perambulate, range, roam, rove, stray, stroll, take a stroll, take a walk, travel, walk, walk about, walk around, wander), arapsaçı (dogs dinner, elflock, skein, snarl, spaghetti, tangle, tangled skein, woolly hair). (various references) | |
Turkmen | imeюmek (be disheveled, tangled hair), bulaюmak (get dirty, get tangled and confused). (various references) | |
Ukrainian | складний (complex, complicated, composite, compound, decomposite, elaborate, intricate, involute, involved, jointed, mazy, multiplex, operose, profound, tickle, tricky), заплутаний (complex, complicated, entangled, implicate, inextricable, intricate, involved, knotted, knotty, mazy, muzzy, perplexed, wandered). (various references) | |
Welsh | dyrys (abstruse, difficult, perplexing). (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words ending with "tangled": disentangled, entangled, untangled. (additional references) | |
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"Tangled" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: rangled, tangeled, tawgle, tengel, tengle, tingler, tinglet, trangler. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "tangled" (pronounced ta"ngguld) |
| 7 | t a" ng g u l d | entangled. |
| 6 | -a" ng g u l d | angled, dangled, jangled, mangled, newfangled, spangled, strangled, wangled, wrangled. |
| 5 | -ng g u l d | bungled, commingled, intermingled, mingled, singled. |
| 4 | -g u l d | bedraggled, boggled, juggled, giggled, haggled, ogled, smuggled, straggled, struggled, toggled. |
| 3 | -u l d | addled, ambled, annulled, assembled, babbled, backpedaled, baffled, barreled, battled, bedeviled, befuddled, belittled, bespectacled, bevelled, bicycled, bottled, bridled, bristled, bubbled, buckled, bundled, cabled, canceled, cancelled, channeled, chiseled, chortled, chronicled, chuckled, circled, cobbled, coddled, corbelled, counseled, coupled, crackled, credentialed, crippled, crumbled, crumpled, cuddled, cycled, dabbled, dazzled, dialed, dibbled, dimpled, disabled, disassembled, jostled, jumbled, kindled, knuckled, labeled, labelled, ladled, leveled, levelled, libeled, disgruntled, disheveled, dismantled, doubled, dribbled, dueled, dwindled, embattled, embezzled, emerald, empaneled, enabled, enameled, encircled, enfeebled, entitled, equaled, fabled, fiddled, fizzled, flanneled, fondled, frazzled, freckled, fueled, fuelled, fumbled, funneled, gambled, garbled, gobbled, grappled, grizzled, grumbled, handled, hassled, heckled, Herald, hobbled, huddled, humbled, hustled, idled, impaneled, imperiled, initialed, manhandled, marbled, marshaled, marshalled, marveled, mishandled, mislabeled, modeled, mottled, muddled, muffled, mumbled, muscled, muzzled, needled, nestled, nettled, nibbled, paddled, paneled, parceled, pedaled, pedalled, peddled, penciled, peopled, pickled, principled, pummeled, puzzled, quadrupled, quarreled, quintupled, rambled, rankled, rattled, raveled, reassembled, recycled, redoubled, refueled, rekindled, remodeled, resembled, resettled, reshuffled, reveled, riddled, rifled, rippled, rivaled, ruffled, rumbled, rumpled, saddled, sampled, scaffold, scrambled, scribbled, scuffled, scuttled, settled, shackled, shoveled, shriveled, shuffled, shuttled, signaled, signalled, sizzled, snarled, sparkled, speckled, spiraled, sprinkled, squabbled, squirreled, stapled, startled, stenciled, stifled, straddled, stumbled, subtitled, swindled, tabled, tackled, tasseled, tattled, throttled, tickled, tinkled, titled, toppled, totaled, totalled, trampled, traveled, travelled, trebled, trembled, trickled, tripled, troubled, trundled, tumbled, tussled, unbridled, unlabeled, unprincipled, unraveled, unrivaled, unruffled, unsettled, unshackled, untrammeled, untroubled, waffled, whistled, whittled, widdled, wobbled, wrestled, wrinkled. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-d-e-g-l-n-t" | |
-1 letter: angled, dangle, dental, gelant, lagend, tanged, tangle. | |
-2 letters: agent, aglet, angel, angle, anted, dealt, delta, eland, gated, glade, gland, glean, laden, lated, laten, leant, naled. | |
-3 letters: aged, ante, dale, dang, date, deal, dean, delt, dent, egad, egal, elan, etna, gaed, gaen, gale, gane, gate, geld, gelt, gent, geta, glad, gled, glen, gnat, lade. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-d-e-g-l-n-t" | |
+1 letter: delating, twangled. | |
+2 letters: angulated, deflating, desalting, detailing, elongated, entangled, gallanted, gantleted, gladstone, strangled, treadling, untangled. | |
+3 letters: datelining, defaulting, delegating, delegation, depilating, desolating, gadolinite, galavanted, galivanted, gauntleted, gladstones, goaltender, granulated, intaglioed, judgmental. | |
+4 letters: candlelight, conglobated, deadlifting, decollating, defalcating, defoliating, delegations, delineating, detasseling, devaluating, disentangle, dovetailing, elucidating, gadolinites, gallivanted, gelatinized, geniculated, goaltenders, goaltending, halogenated, invigilated, maledicting, nondelegate, pedestaling, plantigrade, uncataloged, undelegated, unregulated. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Modern | 5. Usage: Commercial 6. Images: Slideshow 7. Images: Photo Album 8. Images: Digital Art | 9. Quotations: Fiction 10. Quotations: Non-fiction 11. Usage Frequency 12. Expressions | 13. Expressions: Internet 14. Translations: Modern 15. Derivations 16. Rhymes | 17. Anagrams 18. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
