tangle vs untie

tangle

verb
  • To catch and hold. 

  • To mix together or intertwine. 

  • To enter into an argument, conflict, dispute, or fight. 

  • To become mixed together or intertwined. 

noun
  • Any large type of seaweed, especially a species of Laminaria. 

  • An argument, conflict, dispute, or fight. 

  • A complicated or confused state or condition. 

  • A tangled twisted mass. 

  • A paired helical fragment of tau protein found in a nerve cell and associated with Alzheimer's disease. 

  • Any long hanging thing, even a lanky person. 

  • A region of the projection of a knot such that the knot crosses its perimeter exactly four times. 

  • An instrument consisting essentially of an iron bar to which are attached swabs, or bundles of frayed rope, or other similar substances, used to capture starfishes, sea urchins, and other similar creatures living at the bottom of the sea. 

  • A form of art which consists of sections filled with repetitive patterns. 

untie

verb
  • To free from fastening or from restraint; to let loose; to unbind. 

  • In the Perl programming language, to undo the process of tying, so that a variable uses default instead of custom functionality. 

  • To resolve; to unfold; to clear. 

  • To become untied or loosed. 

  • To loosen, as something interlaced or knotted; to disengage the parts of. 

How often have the words tangle and untie occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )