TANGLED

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does tangled mean? 

• TANGLED (adjective)
  The adjective TANGLED has 2 senses:

1. in a confused mass

2. highly complex or intricate and occasionally devious

  Familiarity information: TANGLED used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• TANGLED (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

In a confused mass

Context example:

the tangled ropes

Similar:

afoul; foul; fouled (especially of a ship's lines etc)

enmeshed; intermeshed (caught as if in a mesh)

entangled (twisted together in a tangled mass)

knotty; snarled; snarly (tangled in knots or snarls)

matted (tangled in a dense mass)

rootbound (having the roots matted or densely tangled)

thrown; thrown and twisted (twisted together; as of filaments spun into a thread)

Antonym:

untangled (not tangled)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Highly complex or intricate and occasionally devious

Synonyms:

Byzantine; convoluted; involved; knotty; tangled; tortuous

Context example:

tortuous negotiations lasting for months

Similar:

complex (complicated in structure; consisting of interconnected parts)

 Context examples 

But I shall come back in the evening at the hour you have mentioned, for I should like to see the solution of so tangled a business.

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

So far as I can see, it is just as tangled a business as ever I handled, and yet at first it seemed so simple that one couldn’t go wrong.

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

There lay the end of this tangled line.

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

I thought there were excellent materials in him; though for the present they hung together somewhat spoiled and tangled.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The psychology of it is sadly tangled, and yet I could read the workings of his mind as clearly as though it were a printed book.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

You won’t want to get tangled up in Mercury’s mix-ups and miscommunications.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

A villous structure of tangled masses of BLOOD VESSELS contained within the third, lateral, and fourth ventricles of the BRAIN.

(Choroid plexus, NLM, Medical Subject Headings)

Here they are in this telegram, and the other end of our tangled skein must lie among them.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

But they can also create opportunities for escape, like the giant globs cut loose from Saturn and Jupiter when magnetic field lines become tangled.

(The ice giant Uranus appears to be losing a bit of its atmosphere to space, NASA)

When DNA becomes tangled inside of cells, organisms use a protein called topoisomerase 2 (TOP2) to untangle it.

(DNA damage caused by cancer treatment reversed by ZATT protein, National Institutes of Health)