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What is "ravel"

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ravel
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Ravel

Ravel \Rav"el\, v. i.

  1. To become untwisted or unwoven; to be disentangled; to be relieved of intricacy.

  2. To fall into perplexity and confusion. [Obs.]

    Till, by their own perplexities involved, They ravel more, still less resolved.
    --Milton.

  3. To make investigation or search, as by picking out the threads of a woven pattern. [Obs.]

    The humor of raveling into all these mystical or entangled matters.
    --Sir W. Temple.

Ravel

Ravel \Rav"el\ (r[a^]v"'l), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Raveled (-'ld) or Ravelled; p. pr. & vb. n. Raveling or Ravelling.] [OD. ravelen, D. rafelen, akin to LG. rebeln, rebbeln, reffeln.]

  1. To separate or undo the texture of; to unravel; to take apart; to untwist; to unweave or unknit; -- often followed by out; as, to ravel a twist; to ravel out a stocking.

    Sleep, that knits up the raveled sleave of care.
    --Shak.

  2. To undo the intricacies of; to disentangle.

  3. To pull apart, as the threads of a texture, and let them fall into a tangled mass; hence, to entangle; to make intricate; to involve.

    What glory's due to him that could divide Such raveled interests? has the knot untied?
    --Waller.

    The faith of very many men seems a duty so weak and indifferent, is so often untwisted by violence, or raveled and entangled in weak discourses!
    --Jer. Taylor.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
ravel

1580s, "to untangle, disentangle, unwind" (originally with out), also "to entangle, become tangled or confused," from Dutch ravelen "to tangle, fray," rafelen "to unweave," from rafel "frayed thread." The seemingly contradictory senses of this word (ravel and unravel are both synonyms and antonyms) are reconciled by its roots in weaving and sewing: as threads become unwoven, they get tangled.

ravel

1630s, "a tangle;" 1832, "a broken thread," from ravel (v.).

Wiktionary
ravel

n. a snarl, complication vb. To tangle; entangle; entwine confusedly, become snarled; thus to involve; perplex; confuse.

WordNet
ravel

  1. v. disentangle; "can you unravel the mystery?"; "unravel the ball or yarn" [syn: unravel, ravel out]

  2. tangle or complicate; "a ravelled story" [syn: tangle, knot] [ant: unravel, unravel]

  3. [also: ravelling, ravelled]

Related phrases:
Wikipedia
Ravel (disambiguation)

Maurice Ravel was a Basque French composer and pianist of Impressionist music.

Ravel may also refer to:

Places:

  • Ravel, Puy-de-Dôme, France, a commune
  • Ravel Peak, Alexander Island, Antarctica
  • 4727 Ravel, a main-belt asteroid
  • RAVeL network, an initiative to build a network of pedestrian paths in Wallonia, Belgium

People:

  • Ann M. Ravel, American lawyer and member of the Federal Election Commission
  • Bruno Ravel (born 1964), American heavy metal guitarist
  • Edeet Ravel (born 1955), Israeli-Canadian novelist
  • Gaston Ravel (1878–1958), French film director and screenwriter
  • Jules-Jean Ravel (1901-1986), French communist politician and trade union organizer
  • Pierre Joseph Ravel (1832–1908), Swiss civil engineer, father of the composer Maurice Ravel
  • Ravel Morrison (born 1993), English footballer

Usage examples of "ravel".

She drove as if she was guiding the Berlin Philharmonic through pianissimo passages of Ravel.

There were three other people at the table, Mod and two Irishmen who were there for a few weeks attempting to untangle some cables ravelled by two of their compatriots.

She was cloaked by a skein of ravelled fluff beneath us and we caught the chant before she rose into the sunlight.

I forget how the subject arose, but I remember Jeeves once saying that sleep knits up the ravelled sleave of care.

The piano sonatina of the Funeral March, although by no means as insignificant, is nevertheless uncharacteristic in the resemblances it bears the music of Ravel.

Like a card reversed, she stared at him across granite, books, desultory alchemical pastimes: slight and fiery as a tree unleaving, tense against the backdrop of white-flaked stone and raveling, knotwork hunting-scenes.

He listened harder and realized the thunder was not from the sky but low-planed along the streets, where sled axles humped the faulted paving, bounding off stone buildings, cueing windowpanes into quick vibration, echoing in closed alleyways, dying somewhere out there in the heat, distantly, leaving him with the tag ends of thoughts, the selvage of raveled dreams.

The tone-poems of Debussy and the ballets of Ravel and Strawinsky, the scintillating orchestral compositions of Strauss and Rimsky and Bloch, could scarcely have come to be had not Berlioz called the attention of the world to the instruments in which the colors and timbres in which it is steeped, lie dormant.

Ravel is the old clavecinist become contemporary of Scriabine and Strawinsky, the old clavecinist who had seen the projectiles fall at Verdun and lost a dozen friends in the trenches.

Nerves raveling, she braced herself for direct questions about his father.

He looked rather to be an old courtier handed down from the reign of Charles, and re-attired in a modern suit of fine, but raveling and seam-worn, broadcloth.

He exulted in the pyrotechnical complexities of Berlioz and Wagner, the rich orchestrations of Brahms and Rachmaninoff, the lyricism of Dvorak and Mendelssohn, the tonal adventurism of Ravel and Debussy, and fused them into a style all his own.

And what did the doctors and poets say about sleep: surc e ase, strengthener, healer, k nitter-up of the raveled sleeve of c a re.

Seated under trees, under striped canopies in the squares, they bend together over food and drink, their voices darkly raveled in Oriental laments that flow from radios in basements and back kitchens.

His black braids blew out from between scarves and hood like raveling bell ropes, the bullion braided into them sparkling faintly.