ENTANGLED

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does entangled mean? 

• ENTANGLED (adjective)
  The adjective ENTANGLED has 3 senses:

1. deeply involved especially in something complicated

2. twisted together in a tangled mass

3. involved in difficulties

  Familiarity information: ENTANGLED used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ENTANGLED (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Deeply involved especially in something complicated

Synonyms:

embroiled; entangled

Context example:

felt unwilling entangled in their affairs

Similar:

involved (connected by participation or association or use)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Twisted together in a tangled mass

Context example:

toiled through entangled growths of mesquite

Similar:

tangled (in a confused mass)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Involved in difficulties

Similar:

unfree (hampered and not free; not able to act at will)

 Context examples 

The girls came just in time; they held him fast and tried to free his beard from the line, but all in vain, beard and line were entangled fast together.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

She did not mean to have her own affections entangled again, and it would be incumbent on her to avoid any encouragement of his.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

But that my girl should be entangled in the same meshes which held me was more than I could suffer.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The study’s researchers estimated that approximately 11.1 billion plastic items are entangled on reefs across the Asia-Pacific region, which has 55.5 per cent of global coral reefs.

(Plastic debris linked to coral disease, death, SciDev.Net)

He was entangled by his own vanity, with as little excuse of love as possible, and without the smallest inconstancy of mind towards her cousin.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Electron microscopy showed that the microbes were entangled in beta-amyloid fibers extending from the surfaces of the fungal cells, suggesting an entrapment role for beta-amyloid.

(Alzheimer’s protein may have natural antibiotic role, NIH)

Now that my memory goes back to the old place it would gladly linger, for every thread which I draw from the skein of the past brings out half a dozen others that were entangled with it.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

One mast was broken short off, six or eight feet from the deck, and lay over the side, entangled in a maze of sail and rigging; and all that ruin, as the ship rolled and beat—which she did without a moment's pause, and with a violence quite inconceivable—beat the side as if it would stave it in.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

He found too late, in short, that he had entangled himself; and that precisely as he became fully satisfied of his not caring for Louisa at all, he must regard himself as bound to her, if her sentiments for him were what the Harvilles supposed.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

When the time comes I will describe that wondrous moonlit night upon the great lake when a young ichthyosaurus—a strange creature, half seal, half fish, to look at, with bone-covered eyes on each side of his snout, and a third eye fixed upon the top of his head—was entangled in an Indian net, and nearly upset our canoe before we towed it ashore; the same night that a green water-snake shot out from the rushes and carried off in its coils the steersman of Challenger's canoe.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)