SuaviloquyToday’s word

entangled

Entangle, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Entangled; p. pr. & vb. n. Entangling.] — Webster enters it under “entangle”

1. To twist or interweave in such a manner as not to be easily separated; to make tangled, confused, and intricate; as, to entangle yarn or the hair.

2. To involve in such complications as to render extrication a bewildering difficulty; hence, metaphorically, to insnare; to perplex; to bewilder; to puzzle; as, to entangle the feet in a net, or in briers. "Entangling alliances." Washington. The difficulties that perplex men's thoughts and entangle their understandings. Locke. Allowing her to entangle herself with a person whose future was so uncertain. Froude.

Shades of meaning

Fernald has no entry of its own for entangled; he lists it under complex.

Where he writes about it:

In a complex object the arrangement and relation of parts may be perfectly clear; in a complicated mechanism the parts are so numerous, or so combined, that the mind can not readily grasp their mutual relations; in an intricate arrangement the parts are so intertwined that it is difficult to follow their windings; things are involved which are rolled together so as not to be easily separated, either in thought or in fact; things which are tangled or entangled mutually hold and draw upon each other. — from complex
We speak of an abstruse statement, a complex conception, a confused heap, a heterogeneous mass, a tangled skein, an intricate problem; of composite architecture, an involved sentence; of the complicated or intricate accounts of a great business, the entangled accounts of an incompetent or dishonest bookkeeper. — from complex