entangle
Americanverb (used with object)
verb
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to catch or involve in or as if in a tangle; ensnare or enmesh
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to make tangled or twisted; snarl
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to make complicated; confuse
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to involve in difficulties; entrap
Synonym Usage
See involve.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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entanglednessnoun
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entanglernoun
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interentangleverb (used with object)
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entangleableadjective
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unentangleableadjective
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unentangledadjective
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unentanglingadjective
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entangledlyadverb
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entanglinglyadverb
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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entanglesimple
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entanglessimple
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have entangledperfect
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has entangledperfect
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am entanglingprogressive
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are entanglingprogressive
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is entanglingprogressive
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have been entanglingperfect progressive
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has been entanglingperfect progressive
Past
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entangledsimple
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had entangledperfect
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was entanglingprogressive
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were entanglingprogressive
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had been entanglingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of entangle
Explanation
To entangle is to snarl, intertwine with, or get caught in. Too often, dolphins entangle themselves in large fishing nets meant to catch tuna or swordfish. If you mean to trip your brother, you can entangle your leg around his, and when long-haired people don't brush it for days, it will snarl and entangle itself. A figurative way to entangle is to get caught up in a complicated situation: "I didn't mean to entangle you in this mess with my roommates!" Entangle's roots are en-, "put in" or "cause to be" and tangle, or "snarl."
Vocabulary lists containing entangle
Messenger
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Florida's B.E.S.T. Common Prefixes: en-, em-
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Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
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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:
It’s written in a broad way that could entangle Congress in other aspects of city governance, which probably isn’t a good use of lawmakers’ time.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 26, 2026
By cooling and manipulating these atoms, scientists can entangle them and perform highly precise computations.
From Barron's ● May 20, 2026
Around fifteen years ago, he and his collaborators were among the first to entangle the spins of extremely cold atoms.
From Science Daily ● Jan. 26, 2026
Nets along the east coast also routinely entangle humpback whales on their annual migration to and from the tropics.
From BBC ● Oct. 3, 2025
Surely Forest would not entangle the poor woman yet.
From "Messenger" by Lois Lowry
It nestles and entangles itself in for the long haul.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 21, 2026
Those numbers, however, don't amount to much in the grand scheme, given the rate at which Louisiana "incarcerates and prosecutes and entangles people in the criminal legal system left and right every day," Romero said.
From Salon ● Sep. 5, 2024
It has put banks on high alert, though their efforts to catch the fraud also routinely entangles innocent customers, causing institutions to suddenly freeze or shut down customer accounts in the process.
From New York Times ● Dec. 9, 2023
A series of gates entangles the helpers with the original qubits, which effectively transfers noise from the system to the helpers.
From Scientific American ● Apr. 19, 2022
He captures the gay-hearted birds; he entangles adroitly Creatures that live on the land and the brood of the ocean, Spreading his well-woven nets.
From Our Day In the Light of Prophecy by Spicer, William Ambrose
Archer’s main competitor in the air taxi space is Joby, a startup based in Santa Cruz that has been entangled in a bitter legal battle with Archer for more than a year.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 21, 2026
Schiller delves, inevitably, into the history of AARP, an organization that even in its earliest days was entangled with the health insurance industry.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 20, 2026
At the school, including during my entangled session on the river, we used ribbon instead of flies.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 5, 2026
"The hardest part was getting out," recalled Gil, whose legs had been entangled in a chair.
From Barron's ● Jul. 5, 2026
Soon they’d have the Argo II completely entangled.
From "The Mark of Athena" by Rick Riordan
Washington's warning about the dangers of entangling alliances was followed for 150 years.
From BBC ● Jan. 8, 2026
One term for the scams is pig butchering, because the scammers “fatten up” their targets by entangling them in romantic relationships online and dangling bogus financial schemes, then “butcher” them by disappearing with their money.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 14, 2025
More consolidation – and more influential corporate giants – risks more deeply entangling the interests of profit-driven companies in America’s food system.
From Salon ● Sep. 12, 2024
The team's chief innovation is configuring their "neutral atom array" to be able to dynamically change its layout by moving and connecting atoms -- this is called "entangling" in physics parlance -- mid-computation.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 12, 2023
He rose quickly as though to cast off some entangling danger.
From "The Good Earth" by Pearl S. Buck
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.
