Definition of "tangled" []

• Complicated and difficult to unravel. See Synonyms at complex. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "She says finding that part of her past uncovered both shame and pride -- what she calls the tangled history of this country."
• "Their imaginative use of the word tangled suggests a nautical genesis, as in Ayers’s “tangled love affairs” and “tangled story” and Obama’s “tangled arguments.”"
• "All about them the huge-rooted trees blocked their footing, while coiled and knotted climbers, of the girth of a man's arm, were thrown from lofty branch to lofty branch, or hung in tangled masses like so many monstrous snakes."