Detanglable

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Capable of being freed from knots or twists; able to be separated from any intricate or complicated connections; can be made smooth or untwisted without damage
2. Describing something that can be loosened from entangled or intertwined states; capable of being disentwined or unraveled; possible to clear from any physical or metaphorical entrapment
3. Having the quality of being separated from a tangled condition; amenable to straightening or unbinding; able to undergo a process that removes knots or complicated links

Etymology: Nothing in the word itself is unusual. It is a regular formation built from "detangle", which combines the prefix "de-" (reversing or removing an action, from Latin "de") with "tangle", a verb meaning to knot or snarl. Its ending, "-able", comes from Latin "-abilis" through Old French and means "capable of being" something. Adding "-able" to a verb produces a new adjective, so "detanglable" describes what can be untangled. The root "tangle" is of uncertain origin, though it is first recorded in Middle English in the sense of entangling. Dictionaries rarely list this particular spelling, which is one reason it may look odd. Standard usage more often prefers "detangleable" or simply phrases like "able to be untangled", and "tanglable" is a similarly uncommon form of the base word.

Synonyms: untanglable, combinable, separable

Antonyms: tanglable, entanglable