Definition of RAVEL

ravel

Plural: ravels

Noun

  • French composer and exponent of Impressionism (1875-1937)
  • a row of unravelled stitches
  • A tangled mess; an entanglement, a snarl, a tangle.
  • A confusing, intricate, or perplexing situation; a complication.
  • A thread which has unravelled from fabric, etc.; also, a situation of fabric, etc., coming apart; an unravelling.

Verb

Verb Forms: raveled, ravelling, ravels, ravelled

  • To separate the threads of; to disentangle or become confused.
  • disentangle
    • "can you unravel the mystery?"
  • tangle or complicate
    • "a ravelled story"
  • To entwine or tangle (something) confusedly; to entangle.
  • Often followed by up: to form (something) out of discrete elements, like weaving fabric from threads; to knit.
  • To unwind (a reel of thread, a skein of yarn, etc.); to pull apart (cloth, a seam, etc.); to fray, to unpick, to unravel; also, to pull out (a string of yarn, a thread, etc.) from a piece of fabric, or a skein or reel.
  • To confuse or perplex (someone or something).
  • Often followed by out: to undo the intricacies of (a problem, etc.); to clarify, to disentangle.
  • To destroy or ruin (something), like unravelling fabric.
  • In the APL programming language: to reshape (a variable) into a vector.
  • Often followed by out: of a reel of thread or skein of yarn; or a thread on a reel or a string of yarn in a skein, etc.: to become untwisted or unwound.
  • Often followed by out: of clothing, fabric, etc.: to become unwoven; to fray, to unravel.
  • To become entangled or snarled.

Examples

  • My initial strategy began to RAVEL when my opponent played ’UNRAVEL’.

Origin / Etymology

The verb is borrowed from Dutch ravelen, rafelen (“to tangle, become entangled; to fray; to unweave”) [and other forms]; further etymology uncertain. It has been suggested that the verb is originally derived from the noun, but the Oxford English Dictionary regards this as “very uncertain”, and instead regards the noun as having derived from the verb (compare Dutch rafel, raffel (“frayed thread”)).
Ravel is a contranym having both the senses of tangling (verb senses 1.1, 1.2, 1.4.1, and 2.3; noun sense 1) and untangling (verb senses 1.3, 1.4.2, 1.4.3, 2.1, and 2.2; noun sense 2). It would appear that the tangling senses predate the untangling ones (as in Dutch), but this is uncertain because the first published uses of both senses of the words occur around the same time.

Synonyms

knot, ladder, Maurice Ravel, ravel out, run, tangle, unravel, involve, ravelment, untangle

Scrabble Score: 8

ravel: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Word
ravel: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
ravel: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary

Words With Friends Score: 10

ravel: valid Words With Friends Word