unscramble
Americanverb (used with object)
verb
-
to resolve from confusion or disorderliness
-
to restore (a scrambled message) to an intelligible form
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
unscramblesimple
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unscramblessimple
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have unscrambledperfect
-
has unscrambledperfect
-
am unscramblingprogressive
-
are unscramblingprogressive
-
is unscramblingprogressive
-
have been unscramblingperfect progressive
-
has been unscramblingperfect progressive
Past
-
unscrambledsimple
-
had unscrambledperfect
-
was unscramblingprogressive
-
were unscramblingprogressive
-
had been unscramblingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of unscramble
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:
She warned that allowing the merger to proceed now would make it "extraordinarily difficult to unscramble the egg" if the court decided later to block it all together.
From BBC ● Jul. 20, 2026
And at this point, it may not be possible as a practical matter to unscramble the eggs.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 9, 2024
The researchers first worked to unscramble the signals from Mr. Oskam’s brain.
From NewsForKids.net ● May 30, 2023
Alice keeps those factors as her private key, which enables her to quickly unscramble Bob’s message.
From Science Magazine ● May 5, 2022
My eyes could barely unscramble what they saw.
From "Educated" by Tara Westover
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
We may, for instance, receive a text that tells us what the spy is wearing, but it will need to be unscrambled.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 12, 2024
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
When Johnny saw Sissy, his poor mixed-up brain unscrambled for a minute and he grabbed her arm.
From "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith
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
Hoddan let the confusion mount past any unscrambling, and then slid down the tree and joined in the rush.
From The Pirates of Ersatz by Freas, Kelly
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.
