Word.ws English Dictionary

dishevelling

dishevelling 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 dishevelling

What is dishevelling the present participle and gerund of?
Dishevelling is the present participle and gerund of dishevel.

Words near dishevelling in the dictionary

  1. disheveledness
  2. disheveling
  3. dishevelled
  4. dishevelledly
  5. dishevelledness
  6. dishevelling
  7. dishevelment
  8. dishevels
  9. dishful
  10. dishfuls
  11. dishie

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dishevelling (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: “dishevelling.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dishevelling. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.