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Tangled   /tˈæŋgəld/   Listen
Tangled

adjective
1.
In a confused mass.  "The tangled ropes"
2.
Highly complex or intricate and occasionally devious.  Synonyms: Byzantine, convoluted, involved, knotty, tortuous.  "Byzantine methods for holding on to his chairmanship" , "Convoluted legal language" , "Convoluted reasoning" , "The plot was too involved" , "A knotty problem" , "Got his way by labyrinthine maneuvering" , "Oh, what a tangled web we weave" , "Tortuous legal procedures" , "Tortuous negotiations lasting for months"



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"Tangled" Quotes from Famous Books



... country so enthusiastically described in the account written by Lord Anson's chaplain. How far were these enchanting descriptions from the truth! Impenetrable forests met him on every side, overgrown plants, briars, and tangled shrubs, at every step caught and tore his clothes. At the same time the explorers were attacked and stung by clouds of mosquitoes. Game was scarce and wild, the water detestable, the roadstead was never more ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... There was no ship in sight, and the sea-gulls were motionless upon its even greyness. The sky was dark with lowering clouds, but there was no wind. The line of the horizon was clear and delicate. The shingly beach, no less deserted, was thick with tangled seaweed, and the innumerable shells crumbled under the feet that trod them. The breakwaters, which sought to prevent the unceasing encroachment of the waves, were rotten with age and green with the ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham

... moving, and directly in his line of vision. The sight was too much for the bearers. With a howl they dropped the pole and streaked it to join their brothers in the thorn trees. The pole and the canopy of the hammock tangled inextricably its occupant. ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al

... he must be very quiet about it, that was all. He slipped on his clothes without washing—it always makes a noise—ran a comb through the tangled hair his pillow-tossings of four hours had produced, and got away stealthily without accident, or meeting any early riser, speech with ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... to be carried on with all possible speed; and it was hoped that this, when completed, would almost supersede the necessity of the rest, and form an impregnable barrier to the efforts of any native force; while the tangled brushwood, and newly-felled trees, were to form a formidable and impracticable hedge ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman

... crawled through the place in the branches and stood upright, face to face, Arethusa's head drooped, and a warm flush mounted suddenly. She could not be said to be at her best appearance, for her hair was all matted and tangled, and wildly disheveled; her dress was muddy to her knees, and torn in several places; there were dirty marks on her face. But to Timothy, she had never looked lovelier in ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox

... fair fighting," he shouted—"getting a man's legs and arms tangled up like a piece of Indian matting in the branches of a tree? Doctor, I say! hilloa! where ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... grim irony, it seemed to bear their broken sluice-boxes and useless engines on the very Pactolian stream they had been hopefully created to direct and carry. But by some peculiar trick of the atmosphere the perfect plenitude of that golden sunset glory was lavished on the rugged sides and tangled crest of the Lone Star Mountain. That isolated peak, the landmark of their claim, the gaunt monument of their folly, transfigured in the evening splendor, kept its radiance unquenched long after the glow had fallen from the encompassing skies, and when at last the ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... gardens rainbow-dyed in bloom, cool with the spray of fountains and the shadows of waving palms; and between the cities were wonderful, fertile plains flowing down to the foam of the sea—a vision of tangled blossoms wreathing with beauty the shattered splendor of temples of outworn divinities, or rippling with tasselled corn and vines and all manner of fruit-bloom, in luxuriant promise of ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... was the expensive parlour-maid. Both had fainted or been stunned by the explosion on their way to help their mistress. Both lay inanimate on the library floor. The library glass door was shivered to dangerous jagged splinters, but the iron framework—"Curse it"—remained a tangled, maddening obstacle to his further progress. He could see through the splinters of thick glass something that looked like Linda, lying on her back—and—something that looked like blood. The policeman who followed ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... teak, branchless for some distance from the ground. Each strove to thrust its head above the others through the leafy canopy overhead, fighting for its share of the life-giving sunlight. In the green gloom below tangled masses of bushes, covered with large, bell-shaped flowers and tall grasses in which lurked countless thorny plants obstructed the view between the tree-trunks. Above and below was a bewildering confusion of creepers forming an intricate network, swinging from the ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly

... true that she accompanied her Aunt Elizabeth upon several shopping expeditions, and on one hazardous afternoon they penetrated the tangled undergrowth of Harrods' Stores; on all these occasions Maggie was too deeply occupied with the personal safety and happiness of her aunt to have leisure ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... way down the hill. The bean poles snapped and broke, and a moment later the boys were tangled up in the pieces of carpet and bagging, rolling off the toboggan which coasted the rest of the way downhill by itself, and probably it was very glad to ...
— The Curlytops and Their Playmates - or Jolly Times Through the Holidays • Howard R. Garis

... take up the measure, Turn with the tune again,—clarinets clear Answer their pleading,—harps full of pleasure Sprinkle their silver like light on the mere. Semiquaver notes, Merry little motes, Tangled in the haze Of the lamp's golden rays, Quiver everywhere In the air, Like a spray,— Till the fuller stream of the might of the tune, Gliding like a dream in the light of the moon, Bears them all away, and away, and away, Floating in the trance of ...
— Music and Other Poems • Henry van Dyke

... could not burn; they remained overgrown with creeper. Then, finally, old Wellington Monroe built a house into the walls for the young wife he was about to marry, but he went to the coffin instead of the bride-bed, and the house stood empty. It fell into the courts with the whole of Monroe's tangled business and finally Zindorf gets it at a ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post

... sad partner of the general care, Weary and faint I drive my goats afar! While scarcely this my leading hand sustains, Tired with the way, and recent from her pains; For 'mid yon tangled hazels as we past, On the bare flints her hapless twin she cast, The hopes and promise ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... welcome me at my journey's end. I had ruined my hat, and my clothes, as Amos had observed, were not respectable. I had got rid of a four-days' beard the night before, but had cut myself in the process, and what with my weather-beaten face and tangled hair looked liker a tinker than a decent bagman. I thought with longing of my portmanteau in the Pentland Hotel, Edinburgh, and the neat blue serge suit and the clean linen that reposed in it. It was no case for a subtle game, for I held ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... deliverer through her wet and tangled tresses, and with great difficulty gasped the word "Yes," while she clenched the garments on her labouring bosom with her little hands, as if to show her determination to do as ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne

... the renegade force, Jake Deering, deserter, thief, murderer—everything that is bad. In appearance he was of medium height, but very heavily, compactly built, and evidently as strong as an ox. He had a tangled shock of red hair, a broad, bloated face; big, dull eyes, like the openings of empty furnaces, and an expression ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey

... luck, while his comrade dug out hook and bait, which had vanished down the eel's throat. Dick caught a little one in the first hole that he tried, and drew it safely to the bank. But there he failed to control its wild, sinuous movements, and it tangled itself up in his line in such a style that Chippy had ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore

... this Major Hawke who comes to-day?" wearily, said the listless girl. "Some one of these red-faced old relics of my father's early life, I suppose!" The Rose of Delhi was gazing wistfully out upon the wilderness of beauty in the tangled gardens, sweeping far out to where the high stone wall shut off the glare and flying dust of the ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... Venus of Milo stood on a bracket, with a riding-whip in her arms, and a bundle of working society tickets behind her, and her vis-a-vis, the Faun of Praxiteles, was capped by a glove with one finger pointing upwards, and had a ball of worsted tangled about his legs; but further observation was hindered by the man-servant's voice at the outer door, "Master Ducky, where are you? Your ma says you are to go to ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the shore around; 'T was all so close with copsewood bound, Nor track nor pathway might declare That human foot frequented there, Until the mountain maiden showed A clambering unsuspected road, That winded through the tangled screen, And opened on a narrow green, Where weeping birch and willow round With their long fibres swept the ground. Here, for retreat in dangerous hour, Some chief ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... Oneidas. Only Jean Pauquet had escaped. They had been captives now for several weeks. Rage had begun to die out, fury to subside; apathy seized them in its listless embrace. Heavy, unkempt beards adorned their faces, and their hair lay tangled and matted upon their shoulders. They were all pictures of destitution, and especially the whilom debonair poet. His condition was almost pitiable. Some knavish rascal had thrust burdocks into his ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath

... pretty brown feet went catlike over the sharp stones, as she led the way down a rocky path to the shore. Her garments were scanty and torn, and her hair blew tangled in the wind. She seemed about five and twenty, lithe and small. Her long fingers kept clutching and pulling nervously at her skirts as she went. Her face was very gray in complexion, and very worn, but delicately formed, and smooth-skinned. Her thin nostrils ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald

... agreeably flavored of the roots, seasoned by a small fat duck, which had come in the way of Jacob's rifle. Around our fire tonight were many speculations on what tomorrow would bring forth; and in our busy conjectures we fancied that we should find every one of the large islands a tangled wilderness of trees and shrubbery, teeming with game of every description that the neighboring region afforded, and which the foot of a white man or Indian had never violated. Frequently, during the day, clouds had rested on the summits of their lofty mountains, ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis

... been gales off the coast and pleasure parties on the river, and between them they had managed to do a ghastly business. But Mr. O'Rourke failed to appear among the flotsam and jetsam which the receding tides left tangled in the piles of the River-mouth wharves. This convinced Margaret that Larry had proved a too tempting morsel to some buccaneering shark, or had fallen a victim to one of those immense schools of fish which seem to have a yearly appointment with the fishermen on this coast. From that day Margaret ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... magistrate knows. He has to save children from starvation by taking away their breadwinner. And he often has to break a wife's heart because her husband has already broken her head. The State has no tool delicate enough to deracinate the rooted habits and tangled affections of the family; the two sexes, whether happy or unhappy, are glued together too tightly for us to get the blade of a legal penknife in between them. The man and the woman are one flesh—yes, even when they are not one spirit. Man is a quadruped. Upon this ancient ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... whose disease was that he could not stretch it out. 'Arise and walk,' said Christ to the man whose lifelong sadness it was that his limbs had no power. 'Lazarus, come forth,' said Christ unto the dull, cold ear of death. And Lazarus heard, wherever he was, and, though his feet were tangled with the graveclothes, he came stumbling out, because the power to do what he was bid had come wrapped in the command to do it. And if these other two men had turned to Jesus and said, 'What is the use of telling me to stretch out my hand, or me to move ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... minute, now, Stubbs," said Hal. "You're all tangled up here. You've forgotten what ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes

... assuredly less easy in that jumble of knots, among which twisted the liana in the middle of bromelias, "karatas," armed with their sharp prickles, orchids with rosy flowers and violet lips the size of gloves, and oncidiums more tangled than a skein of worsted ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne

... been allowed to undress me, so that all of them, taking off their gloves, set to work to render me this service. They tangled the laces, caught their own lace in the hooks, and ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz

... appeared as red as blood, and in a twinkling it was dark as the charnel house. I seemed to have a knife with hundreds of blades in my hand, every blade driven through the flesh, and all so inextricably bent and tangled together that I could not withdraw them for some time; and when I did, from my lacerated fingers the bloody fibres would stretch out all quivering with life. After a frightful paroxysm of this kind I would start like a maniac from my ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various

... back from the window, admitting light enough for the watchers by the bedside to see if the sufferer still breathed. Life was not extinct, and Mrs. Markham's lips moved with a prayer of thanksgiving when Mrs. Jones pointed to a tiny drop of moisture beneath the tangled hair. Ethelyn would live, the doctor said, but down in the parlor on the sofa where Daisy had lain was a little lifeless form with a troubled look upon its face, showing that it had fought for its life. Prone upon the floor beside it sat Andy, whispering to the ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... most charming and appropriate subjects for his pencil. These consisted of rural "bits" of the most picturesque but homely description—decayed pollard trees and old moss-grown orchards, combined with cottages and farm-houses in the most paintable state of decay, with tangled hedges and neglected fences, overrun with vegetation clinging to them with all "the careless grace of Nature." However neglected these might be by the farmer, they were always tit-bits for Patrick. When sketching such subjects he was in his ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... were busy tidying up that valley, and making that stream respectable. All the stones that were impeding the course of the water they were carefully picking out and carting away. The bank on either side they were bricking up and cementing. The overhanging trees and bushes, the tangled vines and creepers they were rooting up and trimming down. A little further I came upon the finished work—the mountain valley as it ought to be, according to German ideas. The water, now a broad, sluggish stream, flowed over a level, gravelly bed, between two walls crowned ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome

... through his flesh. He sprang up in the air, but halfway to his feet collapsed. His body crumpled in like a leaf withered in sudden heat, and he came down, his chest across his pan of gold, his face in the dirt and rock, his legs tangled and twisted because of the restricted space at the bottom of the hole. His legs twitched convulsively several times. His body was shaken as with a mighty ague. There was a slow expansion of the lungs, accompanied by a deep sigh. Then the air was slowly, very slowly, exhaled, ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London

... swung herself from the saddle and stood before Seth, a tall, slim girl of twelve, a girl of complexion brown as berries, of dark eyes heavily fringed with thick lashes and dusky hair tinged redly with sunburn. Her hair, one of her beauties, blew about her ears in tangled curls that were unconfined by ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris

... of terror among all the small children of the section. Mothers hushed their crying with, "Alan Gorrach will get you." Alan was a small man, short in the legs, but with long, swinging, sinewy arms. He had a gypsy face, and tangled, long, black hair; and as he walked through the forest he might be heard talking to himself, with wild gesticulations. He was an itinerant cooper by trade, and made for the farmers' wives their butter-tubs and butter-ladles, mincing-bowls and coggies, and for the ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor

... left to do but commence," which was quite enough if you happened to be a member of the play committee. But before you "began to commence" all the tangled threads of the four happy years ought to be laid straight, and they weren't, or at least one wasn't. Betty had always felt sure that before Eleanor graduated she would get back her standing with the class. But if she had, there was ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde

... an amicable adjustment of complicated business matters between the widow Judith Detrick and Abraham Detrick. It is pleasant to straighten between members of our body business matters which present a somewhat crooked and tangled appearance, when all the parties are willing to have things adjusted through the mediation of disinterested Brethren. How much better this than to go to law! The tendency of private adjustments by arbitration is to heal ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline

... her long golden hair a tangled mass around her shoulders, and her blue silk negligee edged with swansdown draped ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells

... contained, and turning, saw that the pines were closer than I knew. A waft of something purer, fresher, reached my nostrils on a little noiseless wind, as, leaning across the gate, I turned my back upon the cultivated grounds and gazed into a region of more natural, tangled growth. ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood

... rapidly clearing and, from out the tangled maze of dancing girls, popping corks, and hilarious, dress-suited men, loomed large the picture of a policeman. Just how it all happened he could not recollect. He must see the boys and get the ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... wild, unconquered race of vegetable giants, draped, festooned, corded, matted, and ribboned with climbing and creeping plants, woody and succulent, in endless variety. The exuberance of nature displayed in these million square acres of tangled, impenetrable forest offers a bar to civilization nearly as great as its sterility in the African deserts. A macheta is a necessary predecessor: the moment you land (and it is often difficult to get a footing on the bank), you are confronted by a wall of vegetation. Lithe lianas, starred ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... mislaid her glasses, worked her shuttle at hazard in and out of that picture of intricate pattern called Life, and having tangled and knotted together the crimson thread of passion, the golden thread of youth and the honest brown of a deep, undemonstrative love, she left the disentanglement of the muddle in the hands of Olivia, Duchess ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest

... end was on the ground at Cambridge where two years earlier Washington had trained his first army. Every day Burgoyne expected to embark. There was delay and, at last, he knew the reason. Congress repudiated the terms granted by Gates. A tangled dispute followed. Washington probably had no sympathy with the quibbling of Congress. But he had no desire to see this army return to Europe and release there an army to serve in America. Burgoyne's force was never sent to England. For ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong

... midst of this a dripping vessel laboured sorely. The green water rushed from side to side over her slippery, filthy deck as she rolled, and carried with it a tangled mass of ropes, a wooden bucket, a capstan bar, and—ominous sign—a soaking, limp fur cap. The huge boom, reaching nearly the whole length of the little vessel, swung wildly from side to side as the ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... had served every interest but his own; and Charles his son, elected Emperor as fourth of that name, and first as King of Bohemia, took into his own firm hands the tangled coils of Central European affairs, making as centre of his activities his own city ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... change, if it were possible, in the conditions under which their work is done. Beppe assured me that the question is not being overlooked, but it has roots which extend further and are more complicated than the galleries in the mine—roots which are tangled with the roots of other questions affecting other interests, and these again affect others. So I bowed before the other considerations and hoped that with the changes that are continually taking place in Sicily something may soon be done for the sulphur-miners, trusting that ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones

... sneered the mayor. "But no exquisite from your set with his little air-gun ever scared me. You try to get away from here with that bundle and you'll find yourself all tangled up in the worst scrap ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers

... arena with a rope-net folded over his left shoulder. The animal made its spring. The man, with a sudden movement of his right arm, cast the net after the manner of the fisherman; he covered the beast and tangled it in the meshes. A thrust of the trident gave the quietus to ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... width of the cemetery, when they came to a spacious lot, surrounded by large trees and containing several monuments. It seemed less neglected than the lots about it, and as they drew nigh they saw among the tombs a very black and seemingly aged Negro engaged in pruning a tangled rose tree. Near him stood a dilapidated basket, partially filled with weeds and leaves, into which he was throwing the dead and superfluous limbs. He seemed very intent upon his occupation, and had not noticed the colonel's and Phil's ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt

... useless to struggle; without resisting, he let them place upon his head a cap-like device that seemed lost in a tangled maze of machinery. Each meteor-man grasped one of the instruments resembling old-time radio head-phones that were fastened to Parkinson's head-gear, and clamped it ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... below the seething floods, and the whole earth swayed and rumbled with the earthquake shocks. Soon the immemorial snows of Thibet and the Himalaya were melting and pouring down by ten million deepening converging channels upon the plains of Burmah and Hindostan. The tangled summits of the Indian jungles were aflame in a thousand places, and below the hurrying waters around the stems were dark objects that still struggled feebly and reflected the blood-red tongues of fire. ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... a mass of tangled, blood-clotted hair was an irregular patch where a piece of bone had been blown away, ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt

... number of this magazine there is an article entitled "The May Campaign in Virginia," which gives an outline of the operations of the Army of the Potomac in its march from its encampment on the Rapidan, through the tangled thickets of the Wilderness, to the bloody fields of Spottsylvania, across the North Anna, to the old battle-ground of Cold Harbor. The closing paragraph of that article is an appropriate introduction to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various

... of his search for Angelica, the County Orlando had just restored two lovers to one another, and was pursuing a Pagan enemy to no purpose through a wild and tangled wood, when he came into a beautiful spot by a river's side, which tempted him to rest himself from the heat. It was a small meadow, full of daisies and butter-cups, and surrounded with trees. There was an air abroad, notwithstanding the heat, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... highly-coloured! The pageant of the river bank had marched steadily along, unfolding itself in scene-pictures that succeeded each other in stately procession. Purple loosestrife arrived early, shaking luxuriant tangled locks along the edge of the mirror whence its own face laughed back at it. Willow-herb, tender and wistful, like a pink sunset cloud, was not slow to follow. Comfrey, the purple hand-in-hand with the white, crept forth to take its place in the line; and at last one morning the diffident ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... through which he led her made the afternoon one she knew she should never forget. They wandered through moss walks and alleys, through tangled shrubberies bursting into bloom, beneath avenues of blossoming horse-chestnuts and scented limes, between thickets of budding red and white may, and jungles of neglected rhododendrons; through sunken gardens and walled ones, past terraces with broken balustrades of ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... looking at the pipe-joint. She wandered into the fruit-garden, among the raspberry and currant bushes, without impetus to pick and eat. Two months ago—she was light-hearted! Even two days ago—light-hearted, before Prosper Profond told her. Now she felt tangled in a web-of passions, vested rights, oppressions and revolts, the ties of love and hate. At this dark moment of discouragement there seemed, even to her hold-fast nature, no way out. How deal with it—how sway and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... court-yard. It was the home of the Ritsons, known as the Ghyll, a long Cumbrian homestead of gray stone and green slate. A lazy curl of smoke was winding up from one chimney through the clear air. A gossamer net of the tangled boughs of a slim brier-rose hung over the face of a broad porch, and at that moment a butterfly flitted through it. The chattering of geese ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... "I just wanted to tell you that old Frosthead and forty braves are some'ers between here and your outfit, with their war paint on and blood in their eyes, cayoodling and whoopin' fit to beat hell with the blower on, and if you get tangled up with them, I reckon they'll give you a hair-cut and shampoo, to say nothing of other trimmings. They say they're after the Crows, but it's a ten-dollar bill against a last year's bird's-nest that they'll take on any kind of trouble that comes ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips

... to Gen. Lee, was one of great natural strength, on ground covered with dense forest and tangled under-growth, behind breastworks of logs and an impenetrable abattis, and approached by few roads, all easily swept by artillery. And, while it is true that the position was difficult to carry by direct assault, full compensation ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge

... caves, Lop-Ear led me a chase through the trees and down to the river. We came out upon it where a large slough entered from the blueberry swamp. The mouth of this slough was wide, while the slough itself was practically without a current. In the dead water, just inside its mouth, lay a tangled mass of tree trunks. Some of these, what of the wear and tear of freshets and of being stranded long summers on sand-bars, were seasoned and dry and without branches. They floated high in the water, and ...
— Before Adam • Jack London

... the teacher and the two girls, Tommy in her haste to blurt out the full story had become hopelessly tangled. She hesitated, stammered, then stopped short. There was a merry laugh ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge

... confusion, one bright and luminous path may be easily descried. As a broad highroad runs straight through some tangled forest, so this path runs through the ages, from the time of Christ, even to the ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan

... sailors of the starboard-watch. The same evening these four found themselves prisoners in the "brig," with a sentry standing over them. They were charged with violating a well-known law of the ship—having been engaged in one of those tangled, general fights sometimes occurring among sailors. They had nothing to anticipate but a flogging, ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... work enough. The men were very dirty, the "sacred soil" of Virginia clinging to their clothing and persons in plenty. Their hair was matted and tangled, and often, not free from vermin, and they were as Mrs. Fales had said, a rough set. But those apparently fragile and delicate girls had great energy and resolution, and the subject of our sketch was not disposed to undertake an enterprise and then ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... water's margin set Swoon and sink as they were dead Though their weary leaves be fed With the foam-drops of the pool Where it trembles dark and cool Wrinkled by the fountain spraying O'er it. And the honey-bee Hums his drowsy melody And wanders in his course a-straying Through the sweet and tangled glade With his golden mead o'erladen, Where beneath the pleasant shade Of the darkling boughs a maiden— Milky limb and fiery tress, All at sweetest random laid— Slumbers, drunken with the excess Of the ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis

... was salved and bandaged, and the most hopelessly tangled knots of curls cut away. After which, Patricia, sitting back on heels, ...
— Patricia • Emilia Elliott

... to the horizon, and there the Snows lifted themselves, hardly more palpable than the drifted clouds, except for a gleam of ice in their whiteness. A low stone wall ran along the verge of the precipice, and, looking down, they saw tangled patches of the white wild rose of the Himalayas, waving and ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... of the laurels were in his way, and he pushed them aside. There was a tangled mass of bushes. To avoid this, he skirted the foot of the mound, after which he took a few more steps, going round a huge rock. And then, suddenly, he started back and almost lost his balance, while his crutch fell to the ground and his revolver slipped ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... a fountain's side, Beheld his branching horns with pride; While of his spindle-shanks asham'd, Their disproportioned form he blam'd. Sudden he hears the hunter's cries, And to the forest nimbly flies. The woods receive their well-known guest. His tangled horns, his feet arrest; The hounds approach, and seize their prey; Who, dying, thus was heard to say: "Wretch that I am! too late I learn, How little we the truth discern! What would have saved me, I despis'd, And what has ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park

... who said that this story was not true, but other people insisted that it was. Anyhow the washing-machines were perfect. They never tangled clothes put into them. It was reported that Mrs. So-and-so's washing-machine had found a load of clothes tangled, and reversed itself and worked backward until they were ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... necessity that they should now be taken on board. Their bodies had been galled and emaciated by the chains they carried, by the slender store of dry farina—the only food provided for them—and by the precarious and scanty supply of water obtainable on the arid plains or in the tangled forests they had traversed. The first canoe-load was taken alongside the ship about four o'clock in the afternoon, and in an hour the whole were on board. This is reckoned the most favourable time for getting ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various

... looking up in plaintive appeal—"Oh, mother, mother, see! Grace come here! Kiddie's dead! The poor innocent little child!" They came at her call, and knelt with her, crying bitterly, and smoothing back with tender hands the thickly tangled dark curls of the smiling dead thing, with the fragrance of wild thyme clinging about it, as though it were a broken flower torn from the woods where it had blossomed. Tom o' the Gleam watched them, and his broad chest heaved ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... of war longer than we. Our people, moreover, do not wait to be coached and led. They know their own business, are quick and resourceful at every readjustment, definite in purpose, and self-reliant in action. Any leading strings we might seek to put them in would speedily become hopelessly tangled because they would pay no attention to them and go their own way. All that we can do as their legislative and executive servants is to mediate the process of change here, there, and elsewhere as we may. I have heard much counsel ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson • Woodrow Wilson

... main muskeg by a long narrow channel, but mistook our way thinking to follow the main river by taking the broadest opening. It led us into a lake seven miles across; not deep, for every paddle stroke tangled into the long water weed known as mermaid's hair but deep enough for trouble when you consider the width of the lake, the lack of dry footing the width of one's hand, and the fact that you can't offer the gun'l of a canoe to the broadside of a big wave. We scattered our dunnage and all ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

... got yourself tangled up," she said, laughing at me, and I could but acknowledge that I had; and then it was, in the sweetest of tones, that she said: "But if I had thought you really were tangled I would not have spoken of it. Now tell me what you ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read

... the pure water. Tiny bird-tracks lie along the edge of the water, perhaps to delight the soul of some millennial ichnologist. A faint aromatic perfume rises from the stems of the willow-bushes, abraded by the ice of the winter floods. I should not perceive it, were they not tangled and matted all around ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... deciding we might as well have a bit of game for supper, we walked across the open salt-bush plain to the Big Red Lily. But revolvers are hardly the thing for duck shooting, and the soft-nosed bullets of the Maluka's rifle reducing an unfortunate duck to a tangled mass of blood and feathers we were obliged to accept, willy-nilly, the prospect of damper and "Lot's wife" for supper. But our hopes died hard, and we sneaked about the gorgeous lagoons, revolvers in hand, for a good hour, "larning a thing or two about ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... wife and myself sauntered down the road along by the bank of the broad Ste. Marie River, a distance of nearly a mile and a half from the village. Here was a little open clearing, while all around was thick, tangled, almost impenetrable bush, but in front was the beautiful sparkling river, a mile and a half in width, and two pretty green islands just in front of us. Cryer, the farm-man, had followed us with a spade, and we got him to turn up the sod in several places that we might see what the soil was ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson

... trouble for someone, perhaps even me. And this little girl, hiding behind a log, hears them plotting. Now, what d'ye think of that for thrilling a fellow's nerve? What did they say, Madge? Can you remember?" he asked, looking down into the girl's face reassuringly, and stroking her tangled hair. ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes

... not a wild partisan. Although a stiff Radical he had no reason to feel bitter toward men who happened to differ with him on governmental policies. His life did not run back into the quarrels between Greeley and Thurlow Weed, and he had no disposition to be tangled up with them; but when he discovered that Greeley had little use for him, he easily formed friendships among men who had little use for Greeley. It was noticeable that Conkling did not criticise Raymond's erratic run after Andrew Johnson. He heard Shellabarger's stinging reply, he ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... the awful sense of terror and utter loneliness seemed to be rolling over and over her, like an unending sea. Her sobbing racked her from head to foot. She cried until she was spent with weakness. Then, her wet face still pressed against the pillow and her tangled hair flung out in disordered curls, she fell at last into the deep ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley

... if he descended from there it would be into the jungle, which he knew from experience was one tangled and matted mass, impervious to human beings, he decided to go on, and proceeding very cautiously, he began to lower himself down towards the eaves by the help of the many stones which offered support to hand ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn

... Kansas, as Governor, Robert J. Walker, one of the most astute of the Democrats of the opposite faction and a Mississippian. The tangled situation which Walker found, the details of his attempt to straighten it out, belong in another volume.* It is enough in this connection merely to mention the episode of the Lecompton convention in the ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... The tangled utterances which immediately follow, sound as if speech staggered under the weight of the thoughts opening before the speaker. Whatever difficulty attends the construction, the intention is clear,—to contrast the limited scope of the message, as confined to the children of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... glaringly fresh and unpicturesque mining town, whose irregular attempts at regularity were set forth with all the cruel, uncompromising clearness of the Californian atmosphere. There was the straight Main Street with its new brick block of "stores," ending abruptly against a tangled bluff; there was the ruthless clearing in the sedate pines where the hideous spire of the new church imitated the soaring of the solemn shafts it had displaced with almost irreligious mockery. Yet this foreground was Cissy's world—her life, her sole girlish experience. ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte

... puttees. More mud streaked his jacket front and stained its sleeves to the elbows. He was bare-headed, for his cap had remained in the moat at Blentz, and his disheveled hair was tousled upon his head, while his full beard had dried into a weird and tangled fringe about his face. At his side still hung the sword that Joseph had buckled there, and it was this that caused the two men the greatest suspicion ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... near quietly. The wood was filled with people, and a continuous hum of voices rose up under the tangled foliage of the ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893

... advertisement had been left out! Or, suppose he had suggested a certain signal at her house, or in New York—anywhere! It would be a chance too great to take. No lover should leave anything to fortune. Dr. Tarpion will give the information. He shall be the mutual friend—the go-between to unravel this tangled web of deception. ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern

... I should most love to linger, those halcyon hours when, with Marian by my side and the prospect bright before us, we voyaged through those Indian seas, down the long coast of Malabar and up the long coast of Coromandel, past the Isle of Serendib, and the reefs and foaming seas, to where the tangled banyan roots overgrow the muddy mouth ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward

... America has a more tangled root than this; and it strikes its fibres, deep in its ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens

... The horns Of white Himala look upon the place, Which all the year is glad with blooms and girt By groves made green from that bright streamlet's wave. Soft are its slopes and cool its fragrant shades, And holy all the spirit of the spot Unto this time: the breath of eve comes hushed Over the tangled thickets, and high heaps Of carved red stones cloven by root and stem Of creeping fig, and clad with waving veil Of leaf and grass. The still snake glistens forth From crumbled work of lac and cedar-beams To coil his folds there on deep-graven ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold

... my still hunt into my own and other people's inner shrines as she snapped a bit of tangled purple silk thread, knotted it and began all ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... of the Jesuits at an early age, gave indications of an extraordinarily unruly disposition. His was the childhood of a man of talent. He would not study except as his inclination led him, often rebelled, and sometimes remained for whole hours at a time buried in tangled meditations, engaged now in watching his comrades at play, now in forming mental pictures of Homer's heroes. And, when he did choose to amuse himself, he displayed extraordinary ardor in his games. Whenever there was a contest of any sort between a comrade and himself, it rarely ended ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac

... light Miss Alice looked prettier than ever; the jet of gas above her tinged her crisp hair with a lustre of twisted gold wire and threw tangled shadows upon her ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... after his wound, he was hailing the 'Shannon' to fire at the 'Chesapeake's' mizzen top. He then called for an English ensign, and hauling down the American flag, bent, owing to the ropes being tangled, the English flag below instead of above it. Observing the American stripes going up first, the 'Shannon's' people reopened their fire, and, directing their guns with their accustomed precision at the lower part of the 'Chesapeake's' mizzen ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang

... I not seek Fanny Meyrick? She must have come to London long since, and surely the girls were in correspondence. I was too proud. She knew of our relations: Bessie had told her. I could not bring myself to reveal to her how tangled and gloomy a mystery was between us. I could explain nothing without letting her see that she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... wet, indeed? A heavy brooding inertia, Trenchard has told me, seemed to seize them all. "They were not pleasant trees, you know," I remember his afterwards telling me, "all dirty and tangled, and we all looked dirty too. There was an unpleasant smell in the air. But that afternoon I simply didn't care about anything, nothing mattered." I don't think that the sanitars at that time respected Trenchard very greatly. He wasn't, in any case, ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... could not see the house with its lighted windows, speaking to her of the life in which she was involved. She could see nothing except the darkness of the great river, the dark outline of the promontory, and of the top of the bank where the garden began, the dark and confused forms of the bushes tangled together. At her feet the silent water lay, like lake water almost, though farther out the ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... parade! The whole five of us marched up and down Main Street looking as sober as we could, Pee-wee strutting along at the head of the line and every now and then getting his feet tangled up with the edge of the big frames, ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... that he wasn't here to roust out the child; this is a bigger thing, by a long sight. Yes, sir, and more tangled up and scientific ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain

... may wander, and whatever be his care, You'll find his soul still stretching to the home he left somewhere. You'll find his dreams all tangled up with hollyhocks in bloom, And the feet of little children that go racing through a room, With the happy mother smiling as she watches them at play— These are all in life that matter, when you've stripped ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest

... to excel in the winter sports, and with his ankles aching and bending in spite of his efforts, he skated valiantly around the Lorelie rink every afternoon, wondering how soon he would be able to carry a hockey-stick without getting it inexplicably tangled in ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... voyageur's buxom young daughter, who came with us, today, commissioned to cull herbs of wondrous properties among the vine-tangled thickets of the islands. Blue and yellow. Eyes blue as the azure shells; hair flashing out golden gleams, like that of Pyrrha, when she braided hers so featly for the coming of some ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... to fight him, reckoning that if he lost double the number that Lee did, his own loss could easily be made up, but Lee's would be irreparable. His hope was to a large extent disappointed. He had to do with a greater general than himself, who, with his men, knew every inch of a tangled country. In the engagements which now followed, Grant's men were constantly being hurled against chosen positions, entrenched and with the new device of wire entanglements in front of them. "I mean," he wrote, "to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." It took summer, autumn, ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... recall Michael Angelo personally to us, are the prominent arch of the nose, the shaggy brows, the tangled beard, the gaunt grandeur of a figure like that of one ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler

... comfortable, ancient house, that tavern. Huge buttonwood trees embower'd it round about, and there was a long porch in front, the trellis'd work whereof, though old and moulder'd, had been, and promised still to be for years, held together by the tangled folds of a grape vine wreath'd about ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... the daytime. They, however, did not think so. With unerring accuracy they pushed on. It made no matter to them whether the stars shone out in all the beauty and brilliancy of the Arctic sky, or whether clouds arose and obscured them all. On the guide pushed through tangled underwood or dense gloomy forest, where there were not to be seen, for days, or rather nights, together, any other tracks than those made by the wild beasts ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young

... for us to see the features," exclaimed I, pointing to the locks of golden red hair that hung in tangled masses about her. "The hair is enough; she is not the one." And I turned aside, asking myself if it ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green

... her husband's first cousin and also his aunt, her mother-in-law's half-sister and also her niece, her father-in-law's niece, her own mother's granddaughter-in-law, and perhaps other things which the curious may work out." Mr. Tarn has unravelled the tangled political web with singular lucidity. Here it must be sufficient to say that, after the death of Pyrrhus, a conflict between Macedonia and Egypt, which stood at the head of an anti-Macedonian coalition of which Athens, Epirus, and Sparta were the principal members, became inevitable. The rivalry ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... he swung onwards, carrying his cap in his hand, felt a great glow of thankfulness for the impulse which had brought him here. Already he was finding himself. The tangled emotions of the last week were loosening their grip upon his brain and consciousness. Behind him London was in an uproar, his name and future the theme of every journal. Journalists were besieging his rooms. Embryo statesmen were telephoning ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... They will be here in ten minutes. Oh, dear! how can I meet her? My eyes are swelled out of my head. She will be sure to notice." And Georgie hurried to the looking-glass, and began to smooth the tangled fluffs of ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge

... the enemy across New Jersey, overtaking them at Monmouth. Lee was in command, and got his men tangled in a swamp where the mosquitoes were quite plenty, and, losing courage, ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... a wild, tormented world, broken into a hundred sharp mountain ridges which seemed to cut the sky, because between the high peaks and the tangled skein of far-away villages surged foaming seas of cloud, which appeared to separate high, bright peaks from shadowed vales, by incredible distances. As far as the eye could travel with utmost straining, ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... will knock it down again the first time any thing puts her out." "Won't you try her?" said Sarah, pleadingly; but they still said "No! no!" "Don't you mind the day, Dick," said Sarah, "when you pulled grandfather's new net all into the mud, and tangled his twine, and spoilt him a whole day's work?" "Yes," said Dick. "Ah, and don't you mind, too, when he went out in the boat next day, and you asked to go with him, just as if nothing had happened, and you had done no harm, he said, 'ah, Dick, if I ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart

... of conduct or conditions, or of weak reactions to life's stimuli. Always help the child to see why he is angry. Perhaps the situation is one he may remedy himself. Is he angry because the top-string is tangled? Stay with him until he has learned that he can remove the cause of ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope

... did not seem of much value to him, at the time. He searched high and low, far and wide, returning at intervals of from three to five hours to within sound of the axes of his men. He dug the dry snow from clefts between granite boulders and ransacked the tangled hearts of thickets of spruce-tuck and alder. He investigated frozen swamps, wooded slopes, rocky knolls and hummocks, and gazed down through black ice at the brown waters of frozen ponds. He carried on his search scientifically, taking his camp as a point of departure and ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts

... with his flushed cheeks and tangled curls, and not in the least afraid of anything in the world. He looked out of his bright blue eyes as frankly and fearlessly at Christie as if she had been his nurse all his life. She placed him on her knee while Letty tied ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson

... breakfast. A few loads of wireless equipment were sledged up to the rocks at the back of the Hut, and by the time several masts were carried to the same place we began to warm to the work. One of Hannam's coils of frozen rope (one hundred and twenty fathoms) had become kinked and tangled, so we dragged it up the ice-slope, straightened it out and coiled it up again. Several 'dead men' to hold the stays were sunk into ice-holes, and, during the afternoon, one mast was dragged into position by ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... removed, the bog is smoothed, and covered 2 or 3 in. deep with clean sand. The vines are now set, the lower ends of them being shoved through the sand into the richer earth. In order to prevent a too rapid and tangled growth of vine, it is customary to resand the bog every three or four years to a depth of one-fourth or one-half inch. When sanding is not practicable, the vines may be mown off when ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey

... remembered an interesting fact about Diana's Grove—there is, I have long understood, some strange mystery about that house. It may be of some interest, or it may be trivial, in such a tangled skein as we ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker

... when all echoes of the chase had died, Of horn and halloo, bells and baying hounds, How mine ears drank the ripple of the tide On that fair shore, the chirp of unseen birds, The rustling of the tangled undergrowth, And the deep lyric murmur of the pines, When through their high tops swept the sudden breeze! There was my world, there would my heart dilate, And my aspiring soul dissolve in prayer Unto that Spirit of Love whose energies Were active round me, yet whose presence, sphered ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various

... of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin

... five years having seen its growth from a very humble and insignificant beginning to its present promising proportions—holds the solution of at least one equation of the problem. To have made cooking and industrial training the fashion is to have cleared away at a leap the thorny underbrush and tangled growth on that Debatable Ground, the best education for the poor, and to find one's feet firmly set in a way leading to a Promised Land to which every believer in the new system is an accredited guide. That cooking-schools and the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... down to the margin of the water, and play with the shells and tangled sea-weed, until she should have talked awhile with yonder gatherer of herbs. So the child flew away like a bird, and, making bare her small white feet went pattering along the moist margin of the sea. Here and there she came to a full stop, and peeped curiously into a pool, left by the retiring ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the Pope miscarried, And came to th' eye o'th' King, wherein was read How that the Cardinall did intreat his Holinesse To stay the Iudgement o'th' Diuorce; for if It did take place, I do (quoth he) perceiue My King is tangled in affection, to A Creature of the Queenes, Lady ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare



Words linked to "Tangled" :   intermeshed, thrown, convoluted, snarled, afoul, rootbound, matted, foul, Byzantine, thrown and twisted, fouled, complex, snarly, enmeshed, entangled, untangled, tortuous, knotty



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