[= Norw. taangel, tongul, Færoese tongul, ON. and Icel. þöngull (:—þangulr) ‘the stalk of Laminaria digitata,’ app. deriv. of þang bladder-wrack, TANG sb.3
The etymological history is not clear; tangle cannot have come down from ON., because ON. þ remains in Sc. and Eng. as th: cf. Thurso, Thorpe, Thwaite, Thoresby, etc.; it must therefore either have spread south from Orkney and Shetland, where ON. þ had become t, or be a later adoption from Norwegian or other lang. having t for ON. þ. (The name ‘tangle’ is not mentioned among the Algæ in Lightfoot’s Flora Scotica, 1778.)]
1. A general term for the larger seaweeds, species of Fucus and allied genera; = TANG sb.3 Often sea-tangle. (Prob. orig. an inaccurate use; cf. 2.)
1536. Bellenden, Cosmogr., xiv., in Cron. Scot. (1821), I. p. xlix. Maister Alexander Galloway … liftet up ane seetangle, hingand full of mussill schellis fra the rute to the branchis.
1596. Dalrymple, trans. Leslie’s Hist. Scot. (S.T.S.), I. 62. He saw bred of a sey tangle, mussilis.
1603. Holland, Plutarch’s Mor., 676. It hath gotten about the keele a deale of mosse, reits, kilpe, and tangle.
1664. Phil. Trans., I. 13. Upon which … Rock-weed or Sea-tangle did grow a hand long.
1744. Preston, ibid., XLIII. 61. There are Plenty of Sea-weeds, called Tangle, growing on the Rocks, of which might be made Kelp.
1895. Crockett, Men of Moss-Hags, lii. Certain … persons were carrying away sea-tangle from his foreshore.
2. spec. Either of two species of seaweed, Laminaria (Fucus L.) digitata and L. saccharina, having long leathery fronds, the young stalk and fronds of which are sometimes eaten. (This is the Norse sense, and prob. the proper one.)
1724. Ramsay, Tea-t. Misc. (1733), I. 91. Scrapt haddocks, wilks, dulse and tangle.
1807. Thompson, Cat. Plants Berwick-on-Tweed, 112. Fucus digitatus, Fingered Fucus; Tangle.
1820. Scott, Monast., Answ. Introd. Epist. I never saw it cast ashore any thing but dulse and tangle.
1845. Edmonston, Flora of Shetland, 54. Laminaria digitata is by them [the Orcadian peasantry] termed Tangle.
1846. Lindley, Veg. Kingd., 21. The young stalks of Laminaria digitata and saccharina are eaten under the name of ‘tangle.’
1875. J. H. Balfour, in Encycl. Brit., I. 508/2. Dulse and tangle was formerly a common cry in the streets of Edinburgh.
3. Comb., as tangle-strewn, -tasselled adjs.; tangle-fish, a popular name of the needle-fish or pipe-fish, Syngnathus acus; tangle-picker, a bird, the Turnstone (Strepsilas interpres); tangle-tent, in surgery, a tent or pledget of seaweed; tangle-weed, tangle-wrack, = sense 1.
1838. Parnell, in Mem. Werner. Soc., VII. 394. Syngnathus acus, *Tangle-Fish, Scotland, [so called] by the fishermen, in consequence of its being found under seaweed, which they call tangle.
1882. Yarrell, Hist. Birds (ed. 4), III. 290. Searching among sea-weed for its food: whence its appropriate Norfolk name of *‘Tangle-picker.’
1882. Good Cheer, 41. Cool sea scented breezes came up from the *tangle-strewn sands.
1812. W. Tennant, Anster Fair, I. xxvi. Up-propp’d from sea, a *tangle-tassell’d shape.
1889. J. M. Duncan, Clin. Lect. Dis. Women, v. (ed. 4), 17. The cervix [uteri] was dilated by a *tangle-tent.
1834. M. Scott, Cruise Midge (1863), 20. Far down amongst the *tangleweed and coral branches at the bottom of the deep green sea.
1890. W. Pater, Wks. (1901), VIII. 23. All around the gulf there is but an expanse of *tanglework.
1721. Ramsay, Prospect of Plenty, 228. Wild shores … Plenish’d with nought but shells and *tangle-wreck.
