extricate implies the use of care or ingenuity in freeing from a difficult position or situation.
extricated himself from financial difficulties
disentangle and untangle suggest painstaking separation of a thing from other things.
disentangling fact from fiction
untangle a web of deceit
disencumber implies a release from something that clogs or weighs down.
an article disencumbered of jargon
disembarrass suggests a release from something that impedes or hinders.
disembarrassed herself of her advisers
Example Sentences
it took forever to disentangle the knot the years that it took to disentangle ourselves from our troubles after someone started using our social security numbers
Recent Examples on the WebBut whether that Spanish influence came from shipwrecked horses, other horses brought by the Spanish, or residual Spanish ancestry in horses interbred with the original Chincoteague ponies is difficult to disentangle. Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic, 16 Aug. 2022 Boiling causes protein molecules in the egg to twist around one another, and a centrifuge can disentangle them to restore the original. George Musser, Scientific American, 17 Aug. 2022 In the departments of theology and charm, Hitchens’s legacy is hard to disentangle, since his atheist barnstorming ultimately became a work of high-concept performance art, to be very generous, or a disposable stand-up act, to be less so. Christian Lorentzen, Harper’s Magazine , 20 July 2022 Gas, on which Germany is banking as a bridge toward its goal of a carbon-neutral economy by 2045, has proved far harder to disentangle from the economy.New York Times, 16 June 2022 In his new book Between Ape and Human: An Anthropologist on the Trail of a Hidden Hominoid, Gregory Forth sets out to disentangle the mysteries of the creatures who may or may not be descendants of Flores Man. Rebecca Coffey, Forbes, 16 May 2022 Experts are working to disentangle the snarl now for fear that things could get worse if Roe v. Wade is overturned. Sakshi Venkatraman, NBC News, 11 May 2022 And now that Wandel has failed, the closely entwined business relationships created by all that Handel are proving devilishly hard to disentangle. Joseph C. Sternberg, WSJ, 5 May 2022 But the fastest computers of the time weren’t fast enough to disentangle them. Ben Crair, The New Yorker, 15 July 2022 See More