Word.ws English Dictionary

disheveling

disheveling is the present participle and gerund of dishevel.

Meaning of dishevel

Verb

dishevel (third-person singular simple present dishevels, present participle (US) disheveling or (UK) dishevelling, simple past and past participle (US) disheveled or (UK) dishevelled)

  1. (transitive) To throw into disorder; upheave.
    • The wind disheveled the papers on the desk.
  2. (transitive) To disarrange or loosen (hair, clothing, etc.).
    • With garments rent, and haire discheueled, / Wringing her hands, and making piteous mone;1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 12
    Synonyms:
    rumple, muss
  3. (intransitive) To spread out in disorder.

Questions about disheveling

What is disheveling the present participle and gerund of?
Disheveling is the present participle and gerund of dishevel.

Words near disheveling in the dictionary

  1. dishesful
  2. dishevel
  3. disheveled
  4. disheveledly
  5. disheveledness
  6. disheveling
  7. dishevelled
  8. dishevelledly
  9. dishevelledness
  10. dishevelling
  11. dishevelment

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: disheveling (page history and authors); dishevel (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “disheveling.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/disheveling. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.