ravel
verb (used with object)
to disentangle or unravel the threads or fibers of (a woven or knitted fabric, rope, etc.).
ravel
1 American
[rav-uhl]
/ ˈræv əl /
verb (used with object)
-
ravels,
present (3rd person singular)
-
raveled,
past participle, past
-
ravelled,
past participle, past (especially British)
-
raveling,
present participle
-
ravelling
present participle (especially British)
verb (used without object)
-
ravels,
present (3rd person singular)
-
raveled,
past participle, past
-
ravelled,
past participle, past (especially British)
-
raveling,
present participle
-
ravelling
present participle (especially British)
-
to become disjoined thread by thread or fiber by fiber; fray.
-
to become tangled.
-
to become confused or perplexed.
-
(of a road surface) to lose aggregate.
noun
Ravel
2
American
[ruh-vel, r a -vel]
/ rəˈvɛl, raˈvɛl /
noun
ravel
1
British
/ ˈrævəl /
verb
-
to tangle (threads, fibres, etc) or (of threads, fibres, etc) to become entangled
-
(often foll by out) to tease or draw out (the fibres of a fabric or garment) or (of a garment or fabric) to fray out in loose ends; unravel
-
to disentangle or resolve
to ravel out a complicated story
-
to break up (a road surface) in patches or (of a road surface) to begin to break up; fret; scab
-
archaic to make or become confused or complicated
noun
Ravel
2
British
/ ravɛl /
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
ravelsimple
-
ravelssimple
-
have raveledperfect
-
have ravelledperfect
-
has raveledperfect
-
has ravelledperfect
-
am ravelingprogressive
-
am ravellingprogressive
-
are ravelingprogressive
-
are ravellingprogressive
-
is ravelingprogressive
-
is ravellingprogressive
-
have been ravelingperfect progressive
-
have been ravellingperfect progressive
-
has been ravelingperfect progressive
-
has been ravellingperfect progressive
Past
-
raveledsimple
-
ravelledsimple
-
had raveledperfect
-
had ravelledperfect
-
was ravelingprogressive
-
was ravellingprogressive
-
were ravelingprogressive
-
were ravellingprogressive
-
had been ravelingperfect progressive
-
had been ravellingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of ravel
First recorded in 1575–85, ravel is from the Dutch word rafelen
Explanation
Ravel is a contronym, a word that has two meanings that are the opposite of each other. Confusingly, ravel can mean both "tangle" and "untangle." It's perfectly understandable to tangle up the meanings of ravel! If you work to ravel yarn into a neat ball, your cat may come along and try to ravel it again. How can a word mean both one thing and its opposite? In the case of ravel, the answer is sewing: As threads come unwoven from a cloth, they become tangled on each other. Since untangling is never far from tangling, ravel covers both meanings.
Vocabulary lists containing ravel
The Vocabulary.com Top 1000
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Metaphors from Top AP English Exam Novels
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"The Tragedy of Macbeth," Vocabulary from Act 2
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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:
“Hence, ravel; a tool that does the fiddly nesting together of details and summary tags for you.”
From The Verge ● Aug. 3, 2022
Grealish is particularly fond of tools that allow cohosters to get even more creative with their posts, like ravel by artist and game designer Everest Pipkin, which enables the interactive fiction tool Twine in cohost.
From The Verge ● Aug. 3, 2022
Danny Lavery: Let’s ravel up some sleaves of care today!
From Slate ● Apr. 26, 2021
Most films, as they ravel their stories, narrow their focus to two or three central characters.
From Time Magazine Archive
There was a yarn snowman that Courtney had made when a Brownie, it was gray now, and beginning to ravel.
From "The Great Gilly Hopkins" by Katherine Paterson
The Japanese trading house said Wednesday that Marubeni’s consumer platform, anchored by U.S. subsidiary RG Barry, will run the portfolio of footwear brands, namely Gola, Lotus, Ravel, and Frank Wright.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 7, 2026
Shelvey counts ex-Manchester United and West Ham midfielder Ravel Morrison as a team-mate and believes are "a few players out here you could take into League One or League Two if given the chance".
From BBC ● Oct. 16, 2025
Somehow, Riley’s drawing produced an astonishingly beautiful work sounding like a 21st century Ravel at his most elementally magical.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 6, 2025
As influenced as her musical language was by the French Romantics, like Ravel and Debussy, the blues was always her mother tongue.
From New York Times ● Apr. 3, 2024
The other great composers of Western music lived during other periods: Bach and Handel were Baroque era composers, for example; Brahms and Wagner, Romantic53 ; and Ravel and Debussy, Impressionist.
From "Understanding Basic Music Theory" by Catherine Schmidt-Jones and Russel Jones
Quiet and unassuming, Henríquez’s novel ravels slowly and surprisingly, and without an iota of sentiment, delivers an original coming-to-America tale.
From Washington Post
Butley's life ravels like the end of his shirtsleeve; it conies undone in the single day we watch him.
From Time Magazine Archive
Though Stoppard ravels and unravels the destinies of these characters, that is not his prime concern.
From Time Magazine Archive
It's all here, the public occasions and ceremonies, the baffling indirections of court diplomacy, the knots and ravels of an intense family life.
From Time Magazine Archive
He’s got on his moccasins, old ones he wears around the house, with holes worn under the big toes, and his V-neck maroon sweater with the ravels coming off the elbows.
From "Cat's Eye" by Margaret Atwood
Let’s knit up the raveled sleave of care together today, shall we?
From Slate ● Jun. 20, 2016
There are those Korean dishes that challenge you to combat and those that knit up the raveled sleeve of care.
From New York Times ● Dec. 16, 2014
And four hours still doesn’t cover the whole tale, which spans 25 years and was really a skein of short stories raveled around the title character, Olive.
From New York Times ● Oct. 30, 2014
But if the robust burghers of Cincinnati had ever known of the notebooks that bitter Mrs. Trollope was carrying home up her raveled sleeve, they would have found some way to keep her in town.
From Time Magazine Archive
Ambassador Rahel, unable to cope with seesawing changes in her life, had raveled herself like a sausage into the dirty airport curtain, and wouldn’t unravel.
From "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy
First, dreams knit up the ravelled sleeve of care by allowing us to process unhappy or traumatic experiences.
From The New Yorker ● Dec. 3, 2018
His simplicity is intact; the threads of his brown cloak haven’t been ravelled.
From The New Yorker ● Jan. 22, 2015
This week China's Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek, who is used to getting along very well on a ravelled shoestring, arrived in India for conversations which may be historic with the Viceroy and military commanders.
From Time Magazine Archive
Some looked at him as they passed, at the man sitting quietly behind the wheel of a small car, with his invisible life ravelled out about him like a wornout sock, and went on.
From "The Sound and the Fury" by William Faulkner
Our mothers’ silk stockings, of ante-bellum date, were ravelled with patience and transformed into the prettiest of neat-fitting gloves.
From The Women of the Confederacy by Underwood, J. L.
Meanwhile, Penelope sat at home, weaving and raveling.
From New York Times ● Oct. 27, 2022
It’s methodical work, pulling the line in hand-over-hand and raveling it back onto the spools.
From Washington Times ● Apr. 1, 2018
My mother turned from a foggy log into a slumbering, middle-aged woman, her mouth slightly open and a snore raveling from her throat.
From "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath
She held the raveling in her palm, touched it with her forefinger, and noted its spiraling.
From "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith
Whatever his fortune, whatever the cut of his garment, there would always be the hem—the tuck and fold that hid his raveling edges; a someone sweet, industrious and loyal to shore him up.
From "Sula" by Toni Morrison
There's no crying off for YOU no ravelling out, no clean leaves.
From The Return by De la Mare, Walter
Davy had finished ravelling out his herring net and had wound the twine into a ball.
From Anne of Avonlea by Montgomery, L. M. (Lucy Maud)
She would pick every shred, ravelling, or speck from one's clothing.
From The Speech of Monkeys by Garner, Richard Lynch
That does not sound like genius; one imagines genius as ravelling its hair, whatever ravelling may be, and producing the immortal Word to the accompaniment of epileptic fits; absinthe also goes with genius very well.
From A Novelist on Novels by George, Walter Lionel
Gently to and fro her tresses drifted on the water, or under the water went ever ravelling and unravelling.
From Zuleika Dobson, or, an Oxford love story by Beerbohm, Max, Sir
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.
