untie

verb

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

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

   “to untie a knot”

   “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.”

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

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

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

3. To resolve; to unfold; to clear.

   “They quicken sloth, perplexities untie.”

4. To become untied or loosed.
5. In the Perl programming language, to undo the process of tying, so that a variable uses default instead of custom functionality.

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