Other forms: tangled, tangles, tangling
A tangle is a confused twisted mass that is hard to undo. Headphone cables in a pocket, a hedge of brambles.
The verb travels with it, and things tangle or get tangled: hair tangled by the wind, a line tangled round a propeller. The figurative use is common in writing about bureaucracy and law, where a tangle of regulations is exactly as bad as it sounds. There is a phrasal verb as well, since to tangle with somebody is to get into a fight with them, and it nearly always arrives as a warning.
Tangle probably came in from Norse, where þang meant seaweed, and tangle is still a word for the stuff. Anyone who has pulled a handful of weed off a beach can see why the name transferred.
Middle English
tanglen
English, today
tangle
Built from
From Middle English tanglen, probably of gmq origin, compare Swedish taggla (“to disorder”), Old Norse þǫngull, þang (“tangle; seaweed”), see Etymology 2 below.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA