untie

Verb

untie (third-person singular simple present unties, present participle untying, simple past and past participle untied)

1. (transitive) To loosen, as something interlaced or knotted; to disengage the parts of.
   • to untie a knot
   • Haſt thou the pretty vvorme of Nylus [an asp] there, / That killes and paines not? / […] / Come thou mortal vvretch, / VVith thy ſharpe teeth this knot intrinſicate, / Of life at once vntye: Poore venomous Foole, / Be angry, and diſpatch.c. 1606–1607 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Anthonie and Cleopatra”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard...
2. (transitive) To free from fastening or from restraint; to let loose; to unbind.
   • Though you untie the winds, and let them fight / Against the churches.c. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
   • All the evils of an untied tongue we put upon the accounts of drunkenness.1651, Jer[emy] Taylor, The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living. […], 2nd edition, London: […] Francis Ashe […], →OCLC
3. To resolve; to unfold; to clear.
   • They quicken sloth, perplexities untie.1668, John Denham, Of Prudence (poem)
4. (intransitive) To become untied or loosed.
5. (transitive) In the Perl programming language, to undo the process of tying, so that a variable uses default instead of custom functionality.
   • After you finish with the INI file, all you need to do is untie the hash. Then you really are finished!2002, Dave Roth, Win32 Perl Programming: The Standard Extensions, page 151