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35,981 English word records · 45,491 etymology sections in this online subset

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2 source sections across 2 headwords matching “Ravel”. These are separate from the reviewed results below.

Open the permanent entry for Ravel →Open the permanent entry for ravel →
RavelEnglish (en) · Unnumbered etymologySource text

* As a French surname, from Ravel. * As an English surname, variant of Raffel. * As a German surname, Americanized from Raffel. * As an Indian surname, variant of Raval.

Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗
ravelEnglish (en) · Unnumbered etymologySource text

The verb is borrowed from Dutch ravelen, rafelen (“to tangle, become entangled; to fray; to unweave”) [and other forms]; further etymology uncertain. It has been suggested that the verb is originally derived from the noun, but the Oxford English Dictionary regards this as “very uncertain”, and instead regards the noun as having derived from the verb (compare Dutch rafel, raffel (“frayed thread”)). Ravel is a contranym having both the senses of tangling (verb senses 1.1, 1.2, 1.4.1, and 2.3; noun sense 1) and untangling (verb senses 1.3, 1.4.2, 1.4.3, 2.1, and 2.2; noun sense 2). It would appear that the tangling senses predate the untangling ones (as in Dutch), but this is uncertain because the first published uses of both senses of the words occur around the same time.

Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗

From Wiktionary contributors; extracted by Tatu Ylonen / Wiktextract / Kaikki.org. Extraction source · CC-BY-SA-4.0. Selected source text is reformatted for display; language and section identity are retained.

Source dump: 2026-10-01 · Extraction: 2026-10-30. These dates identify a dump snapshot, not an individual page revision.

Snapshot checksums and coverage
SOURCE SHA-256
5ff2c072f8099f2d2ce484bd6957bf179f046d2ad37bc36555edf8bb84cb5291
CORPUS SHA-256
c4c2a77325141846709230e11c2959332acd630d53e52905b72d36211251b081
IMPORT RUN
73216b9a9b78ed3830994bf853103716f5a4dc57099e371e9f8fdc468facca26
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Chambers (1908)

1908
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