Other forms: enmeshed
To enmesh somebody is to tangle them up in something they cannot get free of. A net, or a situation.
It is nearly always passive, so becoming enmeshed in a dispute, in bureaucracy or in somebody else's problems. The image is a mesh closing round something, and the more it struggles the tighter it holds. Family therapy uses enmeshed as a technical term for relationships with no healthy boundaries. The plain everyday alternatives are caught up in and tangled up in.
1verbenmeshTo entangle somebody in a difficult situation.
“The firm became enmeshed in a long legal battle.”
Proto-Indo-European
*mezg- — to knit, twist, plait
Proto-Germanic
*maskwǭ
Old English
masc — net
Middle English
mesche
English
mesh
English, today
enmesh
From en- + mesh. mesh comes from Middle English mesche, from Old English masc (“net”) (perhaps influenced in form by related Old English mæscre (“mesh, spot”)), from the related Proto-Germanic maskwǭderived? and maskrǭ respectively, from Proto-Indo-European mezg- (“to knit, twist, plait”). Akin to Old High German māsca (“mesh”), Old Saxon maska (“net”), Old Norse mǫskvi, mǫskun (“mesh”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA