Past tense of unravel
regular verb
The past tense of unravel is unraveled or unravelled. The past participle is also unraveled or unravelled.
Forms of unravel
| Base form (V1) | unravel /(ˌ)ʌnˈɹævəl/ |
|---|---|
| Past tense (V2) | unraveled unravelled |
| Past participle (V3) | unraveled unravelled |
| Present participle | unraveling |
| Third person singular | unravels |
Unraveled and unravelled in a sentence
- Across the aisle, she was absentmindedly fiddling with a loose piece of yarn that had unraveled from her sweater, wrapping it around her finger the same way Derek was wrapped around her finger.2005, Dallas Woodburn, 3 A.m.: A Collection of Short Stories, →ISBN
- As if someone had cut the key string of a net, they all unravelled and disappeared—those tranquillities.1937, Ford Madox Ford, “[John] Galsworthy”, in Portraits from Life […], Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton Mifflin Company […], →OCLC...
- Even the lines in their hands unraveled, these are the lines they stand in to ask for their hands back.1999 March, Julia Vinograd, “The Homeless”, in Street Spirit, volume 5, number 3, San Francisco, Calif.: American Friends Service…. From the entry before
- In the heat of the afternoon, while Roger Clemens threw a temper tantrum and the Boston Red Sox became unraveled, Dave Stewart kept his cool.1990 October 11, Michael Martinez, “THE PLAYOFFS: By the Way, Stewart Leads A's Into Series”, in New York Times, retrieved 03 Jun 2009. From the entry keep one's cool
- But now, cave art and further DNA testing have finally unraveled the origins of Higgs Bison, which turns out to be a previously undescribed hybrid animal.2016 October 19, Jason Daley, “Cave Paintings Help Unravel the Mystery of the ‘Higgs Bison’”, in Smithsonian Magazine. From the entry Higgs bison
Meaning of unravel
- verb To cause (something) to no longer be ravelled or tangled; to disentangle, to untangle.
- verb To separate the threads of (something knitted or woven, such as clothing or fabric).
- verb To separate the connected or united parts of (something); to throw (something) into disorder; to confound, to confuse, to disintegrate.
Questions about the past tense of unravel
- What is the past tense of unravel?
- The past tense of unravel is unraveled or unravelled.
- What is the past participle of unravel?
- The past participle of unravel is unraveled or unravelled.
- Is unravel a regular or irregular verb?
- Unravel is a regular verb: its past tense adds -ed.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: unravel (page history and authors) and the entries of its forms. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws left out forms marked obsolete, archaic, rare or dialectal and added the examples. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this page: “Past tense of unravel.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/past-tense/unravel. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.