A tangle is a messy knot or confused jumble where things have gotten twisted together. When you pull a necklace out of your pocket and find the chain twisted into loops and knots, you've got a tangle. When your little sister's hair gets snarled and knotted after swimming, it's tangled. Christmas lights stored in a box somehow always emerge as a massive tangle in December.

The word also means to become twisted up this way. Fishing line tangles easily if you're not careful. Vines can tangle around a fence. Two people can get their legs tangled while wrestling or playing soccer, sometimes causing both to fall.

You can also tangle with someone, meaning to get into a fight or argument with them. If you tangle with the school bully, you're taking a risk. When a small country tangles with a larger, more powerful one, it may regret the decision.

Beyond physical knots, tangle describes any complicated mess that's hard to sort out. A detective might need to untangle the confusing evidence in a mystery. A teacher might help students untangle a difficult concept. When you face a tangled problem, you have to work patiently to straighten out what's confused or knotted together.