RAVEL • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Ravel

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/rˈævəl/ /rəvˈɛl/ Listen

verb

Ravel v. t. (past & past part. raveled or ravelled; pres. part. raveling or ravelling)

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."

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?" "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!"

Ravel 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."

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."

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Etymology of 'Ravel'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Ravel" Quotes from Famous Books

... just put there; within this last hour, I dare say. Look at the clean ravel in the end. They've taken away the old, tramped one. That's a piece out of saved-up spare ends of breadths, left after some turn-round or make-over, I know! It's faded, and it's homely; but it's spandy clean! I sha'n't let it stay ...

— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... minds. They remind me of a man with a head that is not a head but is just a knot providentially put there to keep him from ravelling out, but why the Lord should not have been willing to let them ravel out I do not know, because they are of no use, and if I could really say what I think about them, it would be picturesque. But the beauty of it is that their ignorance and their provincialism can be made so perfectly visible. They have horizons ...

— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty

... do," said Scattergood. He seated himself, and mopped his brow, and fanned himself with his broad straw hat, whose flapping brim was beginning to ravel about the ...

— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland

... to others also; there are two families at Paris and Montpellier, whose surname is Montaigne, another in Brittany, and one in Xaintonge, De La Montaigne. The transposition of one syllable only would suffice so to ravel our affairs, that I shall share in their glory, and they peradventure will partake of my discredit; and, moreover, my ancestors have formerly been surnamed, Eyquem,—[Eyquem was the patronymic.]—a name wherein a family well known in ...

— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... instrument, as did the compositions of Liszt, for instance. This is a difficult question, but it would seem that the borderland of pianistic difficulty had been reached in the compositions and transcriptions of Busoni and Godowsky. The new French school of Debussy, Ravel and others is different in type, but does not make any more severe ...

— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke

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