ravel

IPA: rˈævʌɫ

(chiefly literary or Scotland)
A tangled mess; an entanglement, a snarl, a tangle.
(figuratively) A confusing, intricate, or perplexing situation; a complication.
(also figuratively) A thread which has unravelled from fabric, etc.; also, a situation of fabric, etc., coming apart; an unravelling.
A male given name

(transitive)
To entwine or tangle (something) confusedly; to entangle.
(also figuratively) Often followed by up: to form (something) out of discrete elements, like weaving fabric from threads; to knit.
To unwind (a reel of thread, a skein of yarn, etc.); to pull apart (cloth, a seam, etc.); to fray, to unpick, to unravel; also, to pull out (a string of yarn, a thread, etc.) from a piece of fabric, or a skein or reel.
(figuratively)
To confuse or perplex (someone or something).
(archaic) Often followed by out: to undo the intricacies of (a problem, etc.); to clarify, to disentangle.
(obsolete) To destroy or ruin (something), like unravelling fabric.
(programming) In the APL programming language: to reshape (a variable) into a vector.
(intransitive)
Often followed by out: of a reel of thread or skein of yarn; or a thread on a reel or a string of yarn in a skein, etc.: to become untwisted or unwound.
(also figuratively) Often followed by out: of clothing, fabric, etc.: to become unwoven; to fray, to unravel.
(archaic or obsolete) To become entangled or snarled.

Examples of "ravel" in Sentences

In the ravel of one of these pieces was a bit of brown thread.
With teh prices of ravel, hunting, this will be my lst trip west unless a rich uncle leaves me a ton.
I came up with the idea of cutting those towels in half and hemming the raw edges so that they didn't ravel.
This attachment is also called a ravel or raivel; and folk-names for it (not in the dictionary) were wrathe and rake; the latter a very good descriptive title.
The surgeon thrust in his hand and fumbled about for some time, while I wondered whether the feel of that one brown thread could be detected from the rest of the ravel.
Even if you are not a fan of big breasts wielded by tiny, multilingual women, my feeling about you is that you will appreciate their dusky fleshiness and call your ravel agent, as they say in Italy, pronto.
The partisans assured us that it was quite safe to ravel along the edge of the valley, although I did not like the idea as now our chances of getting through looked fairly sound and thought a little extra caution at this stage would pay.