entangle

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English entanglen, also intanglen,^[2][3][4][5] formed from Middle English en- + tanglen.^[4][5][6][7] The OED, whose earliest printed record is later, likewise analyses the word as from English en- + tangle,^[8][9] but Etymonline takes it as from Anglo-Norman entangler, a variant of entagler.^[10] The verb tangle is first known in later 14th- and early 15th-century manuscripts of Hampole's Psalter, as a nasalized variant of tagilen,^[8][10] which Etymonline ascribes to a Scandinavian source, comparing dialectal taggla (“to disorder”) in Swedish and Old Norse þongull (“seaweed”).^[10] Merriam-Webster and Etymonline also regard some Middle English uses of tanglen as shortened from entanglen.^[5][10] Johnson (1755) simply called the word one of uncertain etymology.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

To involve someone in difficulty, to embarrass: about 1425, in Barnhart and the Middle English Dictionary.^[3][4][2] The MED's first quotation reads He was yntanglyd with the snarys of his ennemy.^[2] Dictionary.com, by contrast, dates the word to 1530–40,^[6] and the OED's senses start in 1526.^[8]

Semantic evolution

The first records already show the wide, figurative sense of being caught up in trouble,^[2][8] although the OED wonders whether the word first referred to boats or oars caught in tangle, seaweed.^[8] In the 16th century it was used of snares and nets (1526) and of anything that impedes by coils or interlacing (1533).^[8] It was applied to intricate paths in 1611, in the King James Version of Exodus 14:3,^[8] and to a subject made complicated in 1672, in Marvell.^[8] The active sense, to twist things so that they can't easily be separated, is recorded from 1555.^[8] Johnson (1755) separated five senses: to ensnare, to lose as in a labyrinth, to twist, to involve in difficulties, and to puzzle.^[11] Passing legal and social uses were encumbering an estate (1601–16) and binding a person by awkward engagements (1620–32).^[8] The sense of involving someone in a compromising relationship appears in 1888, in F. Hume's Madame Midas.^[8][9]

Timeline

• c. 1425 – to involve someone in difficulty.^[2][4] The OED's first record of this sense is an Act of 1540.^[8]
• 1526 – to catch fast in a snare or net.^[8]
• 1533 – to impede, to cause to stick in coils or a network.^[8]
• 1555 – to make tangled, to twist or interlace.^[8]
• 1601 – to encumber land or an estate (obsolete by 1616).^[8]
• 1611 – to involve in intricate paths or a maze.^[8]
• 1620 – to bind by awkward engagements to another person (obsolete by 1632).^[8]
• 1628 – intransitive, to become entangled (obsolete by 1673).^[8]
• 1672 – to make a subject complicated.^[8]
• 1888 – to involve in a compromising relationship.^[8][9]

Meanings

Verb

1. To catch in something twisted or snaring, so that escape is hard: The fishing line entangled the gull's wing.^[12][5][8]
2. To twist or interweave things so that they are hard to separate: The wind entangled the kite strings.^[12][5][8]
3. To make a matter complicated or confused: His long answer only entangled the issue.^[12][5][8]
4. To involve someone in difficulties or in a situation that is hard to leave: She was entangled in a dispute over the will.^[12][8][9]
5. To involve someone in a compromising relationship with another person.^[8][9]

Word family

• entanglement
• entangler
• entangleable
• entangledly
• entangledness
• entanglingly
• interentangle

Related words

• tangle
• disentangle
• untangle

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
4. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
7. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
11. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
12. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins