entangle
entangle Lexical Profile
entangle Game Scores & Validity
• verb
To cause something to become twisted together with or caught in a mass of strands, cords, or obstacles.
"Discarded fishing nets often entangle sea turtles and other marine wildlife."
To involve someone or something in complicated, compromising, or inescapable circumstances from which it is difficult to escape.
"The diplomat warned that the treaty could entangle the nation in foreign disputes."
To interlink subatomic particles in a shared quantum state such that the physical state of one cannot be described independently of the state of the other, regardless of the distance separating them (in physics).
"Researchers used specialized lasers to entangle pairs of photons across the optical fiber network."
• Rhymes for entangle
Word Origin & Etymology
First recorded in the mid-16th century, formed from the prefix en- ('into' or 'cause to be') and the verb tangle, which itself derives from Middle English tangilen, likely of Scandinavian origin and related to dialectal Swedish taggla ('to disorder') or Old Norse þöngull ('seaweed').