knot

A looping of a piece of string or of any other long, flexible material that cannot be untangled without passing one or both ends of the material through its loops.

Climbers must make sure that all knots are both secure and of types that will not weaken the rope.

The obstructive tendency attributed to the knot in spiritual matters appears in a Swiss superstition that if, in sewing a corpse into its shroud, you make a knot on the thread, it will hinder the soul of the deceased on its passage to eternity.

A tangled clump of hair or similar.

The nurse was brushing knots from the protesting child's hair.

A maze-like pattern.

Flowers worthy of paradise, which, not nice art / In beds and curious knots, but nature boon / Poured forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain.

A non-self-intersecting closed curve in (e.g., three-dimensional) space that is an abstraction of a knot (in sense 1 above).

A knot can be defined as a non-self-intersecting broken line whose endpoints coincide: when such a knot is constrained to lie in a plane, then it is simply a polygon.

A difficult situation.

I got into a knot when I inadvertently insulted a policeman.

A man shall be perplexed with knots, and problems of business, and contrary affairs.

To form into a knot; to tie with a knot or knots.

We knotted the ends of the rope to keep it from unravelling.

For many weeks about my loins I wore / The rope that haled the buckets from the well, / Twisted as tight as I could knot the noose, / And spake not of it to a single soul, / And spake not of it to a single soul, / Until the ulcer, eating through my skin, / Betray'd my secret penance, so that all / My brethren marvell'd greatly.

To form wrinkles in the forehead, as a sign of concentration, concern, surprise, etc.

She knotted her brow in concentration while attempting to unravel the tangled strands.

To unite closely; to knit together.

The party of the papists in England are become more knotted, both in dependence towards Spain, and amongst themselves.

To entangle or perplex; to puzzle.

To form knots.

One of a variety of shore birds; red-breasted sandpiper (variously Calidris canutus or Tringa canutus).

My foot-boy shall eat pheasants, calvered salmons, / Knots, godwits, lampreys: I myself will have / The beards of barbels, served instead of salads […]