ravel
A tangled mess; an entanglement, a snarl, a tangleA tangled mess; an entanglement, a snarl, a tangle.
» John was raveling in the attention.
Amastan · Tatoeba · CC BY 2.0 FRMeaning
3 senses(Scotland, literary)A tangled mess; an entanglement, a snarl, a tangle.
(Scotland, figuratively, literary)A confusing, intricate, or perplexing situation; a complication.
(also, figuratively)A thread which has unravelled from fabric, etc.; also, a situation of fabric, etc., coming apart; an unravelling.
- French composer and exponent of Impressionism (1875-1937)
- a row of unravelled stitches
Examples
4 sentencesJohn was raveling in the attention.
Maurice Ravel had a nice bike.
ruУ Мориса Равеля был симпатичный велосипед. — Biga
deMaurice Ravel hatte ein schönes Fahrrad. — MUIRIEL
"We are in a race," Ravel said. "We're fighting this battle constantly, and we just can't put our guard down.”
"It's almost — I would not say a positive thing, but it's really helping in taming the more dangerous variants," Ravel said.
Origin
The verb is borrowed from Dutch ravelen, rafelen (“to tangle, become entangled; to fray; tThe 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”)).
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