Verb

(en verb)

To make plain, manifest, or intelligible; to clear of obscurity; to illustrate the meaning of.

*

The boy became volubly friendly and bubbling over with unexpected humour and high spirits. He tried to persuade Cicely to stay away from the ball-room for a fourth dance. Nobody would miss them, he explained .

* {{quote-magazine, date=2012-03

, author=, volume=100, issue=2, page=106 , magazine=(American Scientist) , title= Pixels or Perish , passage=Drawings and pictures are more than mere ornaments in scientific discourse. Blackboard sketches, geological maps, diagrams of molecular structure, astronomical photographs, MRI images, the many varieties of statistical charts and graphs: These pictorial devices are indispensable tools for presenting evidence, for explaining a theory, for telling a story.}}

To give a valid excuse for some past behavior.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-07, author=David Simpson

, volume=188, issue=26, page=36, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Fantasy of navigation , passage=It is tempting to speculate about the incentives or compulsions that might explain why anyone would take to the skies in [the] basket [of a balloon]: perhaps out of a desire to escape the gravity of this world or to get a preview of the next; […].}}

(obsolete) To make flat, smooth out.

(obsolete) To unfold or make visible.

* (John Evelyn) (1620-1706)

The horse-chestnut isready to explain its leaf.

Verb

(en verb)

To form raised work upon the outer surface of (thin metal ware) by the repercussion of a snarling iron upon the inner surface.

To entangle; to complicate; to involve in knots.

to snarl a skein of thread

* Spenser

And from her back her garments she did tear, / And from her head oft rent her snarled hair

To embarrass; to ensnare.

* Latimer

[the] question that they would have snarled him with

To growl, as an angry or surly dog; to gnarl; to utter grumbling sounds.

To speak crossly; to talk in rude, surly terms.

* Dryden

It is malicious and unmanly to snarl at the little lapses of a pen, from which Virgil himself stands not exempted.