From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishunravelun‧rav‧el /ʌnˈrævəl/ ●○○ verb (unravelled, unravelling British English, unraveled, unraveling American English) 1 [transitive]SOLVE/FIND THE ANSWER to understand or explain something that is mysterious or complicated Detectives are still trying to unravel the mystery surrounding his death.2 [intransitive, transitive]SEPARATE if you unravel threads, string etc, or if they unravel, they stop being twisted together3 [intransitive] if a system, plan, organization etc unravels, it starts to fail SYN fall apart The company started to unravel when two of the directors were arrested.→ See Verb table
Examples from the Corpus
unravel• After three years, their partnership began to unravel.• Each circle strengthens the others, until the whole is hard to unravel.• Scientists have not yet unraveled every detail of how genes work.• Pop that unravels its own workings, undoes itself.• Sadly, this will unravel some of the goodwill of recent weeks.• Can scientists unravel the complex interactions of chemicals within foods?• I do not claim to be able to unravel the complexities of atonement.• To counter the danger of the former, Lacan would have us unravel the me entirely.• We are only just beginning to unravel the mysteries of the human brain.• Evidence for the importance of both is emerging, and unravelling their relative importance presents experimentalists with a major challenge.• We can also unravel those texts as individual answers to the problem of effective human agency. 