intertwine
Americanverb (used with or without object)
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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intertwinesimple
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intertwinessimple
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have intertwinedperfect
-
has intertwinedperfect
-
am intertwiningprogressive
-
are intertwiningprogressive
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is intertwiningprogressive
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have been intertwiningperfect progressive
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has been intertwiningperfect progressive
Past
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intertwinedsimple
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had intertwinedperfect
-
was intertwiningprogressive
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were intertwiningprogressive
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had been intertwiningperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of intertwine
Explanation
Things that intertwine are twisted or mixed together. You have to intertwine yarn to make a scarf. When things intertwine, they're all mixed up together — it's hard to separate them. To make any type of clothing, threads have to be intertwined. Rope is made of smaller fibers that intertwine. Related jobs—like a writer and an editor—intertwine too, because they are so closely related. You can say people are intertwined if they're close to each other, as family or friends. Getting intertwined could be a metaphor for getting married; the threads of your lives are getting tangled together.
Vocabulary lists containing intertwine
The Distance Between Us
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The Sea of Monsters
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King and the Dragonflies
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Mr. Hofstadter likes to intertwine a couple’s names as a wedding gift, for example, so that “Rachel” rotates into “Winston.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 21, 2025
Julee Cruise’s siren vocals intertwine with imperceptible grooves that swell like gentle ocean waves.
From Salon ● Jan. 29, 2025
As she offers her prayers, the sacred space becomes a moment of spiritual release, where devotion and vulnerability intertwine.
From BBC ● Nov. 30, 2024
In this vision of marriage, spouses don’t occupy separate gender-based spheres; they intertwine their lives, each working to strengthen the scaffolding that supports the other.
From Slate ● Aug. 21, 2024
The minty smell of his soap, the warmth of his arms, how when our fingers intertwine, the brown of my skin and the brown of his are nearly a perfect match.
From "Internment" by Samira Ahmed
The deal further intertwines Musk's sprawling business empire, which already includes carmaker Tesla and social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
From Barron's ● Feb. 2, 2026
Mr. Brewer intertwines the movie’s two registers brilliantly in an opening scene in which Mr. Jackman does a brief musical performance that doubles as the monologue he delivers to his 12-step group.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 24, 2025
"But now there's a very direct lineage between local teams, larger structures like the NFL Academy, leagues and how it all intertwines."
From BBC ● Dec. 28, 2024
The actor and singer star enters Broadway’s “Hadestown,” the brooding 2019 Tony Award-winning musical about the underworld, which intertwines the myths of Orpheus and Eurydice and Hades and Persephone.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 20, 2023
In both we miss the great dramatist who looks upon life with a roving eye and intertwines his tale of private woe with the larger tangle of human destiny.
From The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller by Thomas, Calvin
As for many parents here, grief has become intertwined with anger.
From BBC ● Jul. 23, 2026
Hers was always intertwined, so that’s something that I didn’t really get used to.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 7, 2026
Longer term, Japan’s savings and Uncle Sam’s finances also are intertwined.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 1, 2026
The fortunes of these two groups are too tightly intertwined.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 29, 2026
She and Bieber are intertwined in an eternity embrace, her headband sliding down over her eyes.
From "Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda" by Becky Albertalli
Ellison’s subject was America, whose many intertwining strands he saw as forming one great ecosystem.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 2, 2026
The deal would signal a deeper "intertwining" of the government and private businesses in the US, following a trend seen elsewhere in places like China, Mr Nicholson told the BBC.
From BBC ● Aug. 15, 2025
It felt like mine, this intertwining of fennel and gruyere, two magnificent ingredients, becoming something even better than the sum of the parts.
From Salon ● Mar. 23, 2025
Made out of long, intertwining fibers, the porous material better mimics the structure of the extracellular matrix found in human organs, and it has previously been used to create scaffolds for purposes like wound healing.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 6, 2024
Its floor was hard-packed dirt, and its wooden roof was an arched intertwining of roots, above which rose the tree itself, an oak.
From "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH" by Robert C. O'Brien
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
