untangle
Americanverb (used with object)
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untangles,
present (3rd person singular)
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untangled,
past participle, past
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untangling
present participle
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to bring out of a tangled state; disentangle; unsnarl.
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to straighten out or clear up (anything confused or perplexing).
verb
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to free from a tangled condition
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to free from perplexity or confusion
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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untanglesimple
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untanglessimple
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have untangledperfect
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has untangledperfect
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am untanglingprogressive
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are untanglingprogressive
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is untanglingprogressive
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have been untanglingperfect progressive
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has been untanglingperfect progressive
Past
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untangledsimple
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had untangledperfect
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was untanglingprogressive
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were untanglingprogressive
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had been untanglingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of untangle
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:
Attribution science seeks to untangle how much human-caused climate change shaped a specific heat wave, storm or flood, and its findings now shape litigation and policy.
From Barron's ● Jul. 15, 2026
No need to untangle the complex hypocrisy here — it’s all laid out in arrows and diagrams.
From Salon ● Jul. 4, 2026
To untangle these possibilities, we need much larger comparative datasets of lesions in wild primates, only then can we begin to trace broader patterns and refine our interpretations of the fossil record.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 8, 2026
Mercifully, Aviv has bravely attempted to untangle the mother-daughter dynamic and bring it into the light.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 12, 2026
My hands tremble a little as I untangle the ancient lights from one another.
From "How to Disappear Completely" by Ali Standish
"This work untangles some of the secrets and shows how N-terminal acetylation shape individual protein fate," Thomas Arnesen concludes.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 27, 2023
"It is hard for the government to shore up economic growth unless it untangles the complex knot of weak confidence," said Gary Ng, senior economist at Natixis Corporate and Investment Bank.
From Reuters ● Jul. 31, 2023
The novel tells the story of a Texas-born working man unwittingly becoming a detective as he untangles a mystery that takes him to L.A.’s Black, white and Latino neighborhoods.
From New York Times ● May 17, 2023
Like a particularly sharp country song, it takes cliches and untangles and renews them.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 7, 2023
Ms. Blinny untangles a headset and puts it on.
From "The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle" by Leslie Connor
When Emanuel fell ill in 1988, Emanuel’s son Jim and Jim’s wife Trudy stepped in, untangled the tax mess, and guided the company out of bankruptcy.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 9, 2026
In a sense, then, the alliance is held together by complex supply chains and contractual agreements that could not possibly be untangled overnight.
From BBC ● Mar. 5, 2025
“The chicken or egg on how those things get untangled, and momentum shifted a different way, is a much bigger question,” Friedman continued.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 16, 2025
With this in mind, to create a map of the true relationships between Myotis bats, Foley and Murphy first untangled the genetic code for hybridization so they could tell more clearly which species were which.
From Science Daily ● Feb. 20, 2024
I untangled an aluminum lawn chair which had blown into a manchineel tree.
From "Hole in My Life" by Jack Gantos
Jenée Desmond-Harris offers advice on untangling this knotty disagreement.
From Slate ● Jul. 21, 2026
The novel follows Susan, a queer creative untangling the coulda, woulda, shoulda situationship that has spanned decades, while grappling with the reality of a career that dips and shifts in a changing media landscape.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 30, 2026
Taking a stand will involve you untangling years of conditioning.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 27, 2026
A new study introduces a genome-wide approach for untangling these complex genetic histories.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 19, 2026
Then I went to work on the net, untangling it section by section, getting lead weights and fishing hooks straightened out, yanking out knots around the cow serpent’s hooves.
From "The Titan's Curse" by Rick Riordan
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.
