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Synonyms

unscramble

American  
[uhn-skram-buhl] / ʌnˈskræm bəl /

verb (used with object)

  • unscrambles,
    present (3rd person singular)
  • unscrambled,
    past participle,  past
  • unscrambling
    present participle
  1. to bring out of a scrambled condition; reduce to order or intelligibility.

  2. Also to make (a scrambled radio or telephonic message) comprehensible by systematically tuning the receiver to the frequencies used in transmission.


unscramble British  
/ ʌnˈskræmbəl /

verb

  1. to resolve from confusion or disorderliness

  2. to restore (a scrambled message) to an intelligible form

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

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Etymology

Origin of unscramble

First recorded in 1915–20; un- 2 + scramble


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:

The number hidden in the envelope was the key that would finally unscramble his experimental data and reveal what his team had measured.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 20, 2026

He went 0-for-19 in the Dodgers’ last homestand, when even a game off did nothing to unscramble his mind.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 22, 2026

The researchers first worked to unscramble the signals from Mr. Oskam’s brain.

From NewsForKids.net ● May 30, 2023

Even the operator of the app cannot unscramble messages as they pass across systems - they can be decrypted only by the people in the chat.

From BBC ● Apr. 17, 2023

“I just need to unscramble the last jumble.”

From "Mr. Lemoncello's Library Olympics" by Chris Grabenstein

Now, she does exercises with Sunny in which she unscrambles sentences and puts the words in the right order.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 18, 2026

“I spit it out and she unscrambles it. She does a great job.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 15, 2022

At the bottom of this page are 36 of the letter sets from the long-out-of-print “Big Book of ScrabbleGrams”; each unscrambles into a real word, but of course we don’t care about that.

From Washington Post ● Mar. 31, 2022

End-to-end encryption is technology that scrambles messages on your phone and unscrambles them only on the recipients’ phones, which means anyone who intercepts the messages in between can’t read them.

From Scientific American ● Aug. 9, 2021

"Wouldn't It Be Nice/You Still Believe in Me" , the line runs, before our brain unscrambles the rest of the offering, "God Only Knows", "Sloop John B" and the others.

From The Guardian ● Oct. 16, 2010

Infecting smartphones or other gadgets being used for WhatsApp messages meant the content of messages encrypted during transmission could be accessed after they were unscrambled.

From Barron's ● Oct. 18, 2025

The signal then reappeared in its original unscrambled form — in the ninth and last qubit, attached to the second SYK system, which represented the other end of the wormhole.

From New York Times ● Nov. 30, 2022

Only the recipient can see the unscrambled message.

From Fox News ● Jan. 11, 2021

Consider phone networks: your calls share space with others through a technique called multiplexing - data gets time stamped, scrambled up, and unscrambled at the other end.

From BBC ● Nov. 5, 2019

I was unable to move until my brain had somewhat unscrambled itself.

From "Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer

With the imminent publication of his final book titled "Magpie Murders," eagle-eyed readers would realize that unscrambling the first letters for each novel in the detective series would spell out "AN ANAGRAM."

From Salon ● Nov. 21, 2022

Then, once one knows the colors, it’s simply a matter of unscrambling one’s guesses until they’re in the right order.

From Slate ● Feb. 5, 2022

But coded messages are harder to discern, particularly by policy teams that have not invested in unscrambling them.

From The Verge ● Aug. 20, 2020

One can see it in action over breakfast: think of the implausibility of unscrambling an egg and returning it to a pristinely pieced-back-together shell.

From Scientific American ● Aug. 19, 2020

Then followed the process of "unscrambling the omelet," to use J. P. Morgan's phrase, in order to bring the companies already illegally merged within the letter of the law.

From Theodore Roosevelt; an Intimate Biography by William Roscoe Thayer

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