intertwine
Americanverb (used with or without object)
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intertwines,
present (3rd person singular)
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intertwined,
past participle, past
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intertwining
present participle
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
intertwinesimple
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intertwinessimple
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have intertwinedperfect
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has intertwinedperfect
-
am intertwiningprogressive
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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
-
had intertwinedperfect
-
was intertwiningprogressive
-
were intertwiningprogressive
-
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
From the description of skin as “blue black” to the blues as a musical genre, the color blue and its many shades intertwine with African American heredity, history and heritage.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 28, 2024
As she offers her prayers, the sacred space becomes a moment of spiritual release, where devotion and vulnerability intertwine.
From BBC ● Nov. 30, 2024
As I mention in the book, I see my mother’s approach to cooking much like a painter’s canvas, where the universality of art and cooking beautifully intertwine.
From Salon ● Sep. 15, 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
U.S. regulators are now taking a closer look at the Wall Street playbook that effectively intertwines private credit with traditional life insurance.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 13, 2026
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
The bold, unconventional “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” intertwines jazz with decolonization in its telling of newfound, fragile Congolese independence during the Cold War.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 8, 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 mother in clothing this germ of life commingles, intertwines, and insinuates her own spirit, at the same time educating, instructing, and determining its development according to the influence she imparts to it.
From Plain Talks on Avoided Subjects by Henry Newell Guernsey
Inevitably this discussion may become intertwined with the question of replacing the council tax.
From BBC ● Sep. 22, 2026
Soon the two couples are intertwined, each looking to find some common ground.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 18, 2026
Pointing out that everything is "intertwined", Gaye is now less able to buy fish from mongers like Darboe-Manneh.
From Barron's ● Sep. 17, 2026
The solidarity of Sept. 11 and the political choices made in its aftermath were not the same thing, even if they have become intertwined in our memory of the period.
From Salon ● Sep. 8, 2026
The existence of two intertwined chains with identical base sequences could not be a chance matter.
From "Double Helix" by James D. Watson
"What it does portend, to me, is that Hong Kong will accelerate its economic intertwining with Beijing."
From Barron's ● Sep. 16, 2026
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
Conceivably two expanding civilizations with different planetary requirements would ignore each other, their filigree patterns of expansion intertwining, but not conflicting.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
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.
