untie

English

Etymology

From Middle English untien, unteyen, untyȝen, untiȝen, from Old English untīġan (“to untie”), equivalent to un- +‎ tie.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ʌnˈtaɪ/
• Rhymes: -aɪ

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

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

   • c. 1606–1607, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Anthonie and Cleopatra”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, , page 367:

     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.

   • 1645, Edmund Waller, To Amoret:

     Sacharissa's captive fain / Would untie his iron chain.

2. (transitive) To free from fastening or from restraint; to let loose; to unbind.
   • c. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :

     Though you untie the winds, and let them fight / Against the churches.

   • 1651, Jer[emy] Taylor, The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living. , 2nd edition, London: Francis Ashe , →OCLC:

     All the evils of an untied tongue we put upon the accounts of drunkenness.

3. To resolve; to unfold; to clear.
   • 1668, John Denham, Of Prudence (poem)

     They quicken sloth, perplexities untie.

4. (intransitive) To become untied or loosed.
5. (programming, transitive) In the Perl programming language, to undo the process of tying, so that a variable uses default instead of custom functionality.
   • 2002, Dave Roth, Win32 Perl Programming: The Standard Extensions, page 151:

     After you finish with the INI file, all you need to do is untie the hash. Then you really are finished!

Synonyms

• unfasten

Antonyms

• tie

Translations

Further reading

• “untie”, in Collins English Dictionary.
• “untie”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “untie”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “untie”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.

Anagrams

• unite