June 29, 2016, 19:46
Kallehtangled
This morning my necklace was tangled and I asked my husband to help me
untangle it. Well, you know Shu. That suddenly got him thinking, what is the difference between
untangle,
disentangle and
detangle. When I look them up,
untangle and
disentangle seem to be synonyms, but
detangle seems to mean to remove snarls from your hair. Thought?
June 30, 2016, 12:48
GeoffYou have to have hair in order to detangle it.
I do not de tangle or any other Latin dance.
June 30, 2016, 20:13
KallehSo is does "detangle" only refer to getting the snarls out of hair? I remember doing that when my kids were little.
July 02, 2016, 09:55
bethree5Funny I just spent an hour yesterday trying to find a comb with very widely-spaced tines (no luck), & that word detangle was suggested many times.
I did find a suggestion on dictionary.com that it's a synonym for untangle. When I checked etymology, etymonline did not have the word. But
this forum discussion quotes an OED etymology referencing hairdressing, first seen in 1979.
July 02, 2016, 19:06
tinmanYes, OneLook lists only two dictionaries that define
detangle:
Oxford Dictionaries ("Remove tangles from (hair).") and
Dictionary.com ("to remove tangles, untangle"). The OED Online defines it as "To remove tangles from (hair)," and the first citation is from 1979: "Five attachments that style, shape and detangle the hair." That citation is also in bethree5's link.
It appears to me that this is a word invented by the hair products industry. They apparently didn't want to use
untangle,
disentangle or
unsnarl). Rather, it seems they wanted a word all their own that refers specifically to hair (though the Dictionary.com definition doesn't so specify}.
July 02, 2016, 20:52
KallehYes, I checked OED, and it does cite it from 1979. I am skeptical, however. It seems older than that. I know when Shu has worked for OED to find original citations, he has found that often they don't have the earliest cite.
July 03, 2016, 05:55
<Proofreader>Untangle, detangle disentangle. The solution is
bald.
July 12, 2016, 11:48
<Proofreader>Isn't another word for bald
dreadnought?