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''imbroglio'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260202202216-00-⌔

imbroglio - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

imbroglio (plural imbroglios or imbrogli)

  • A complicated situation; an entanglement.
    • ✤ Into the drawers and china pry,/Papers and books, a huge imbroglio!/Under a tea-cup he might lie,/Or creased, like dogs-ears, in a folio.1
    • ✤ Your trip here will never quite go as planned. […] There may be strikes, mixed-up reservations, maddening imbrogli of all sorts. But they will be charming imbrogli because the Italian people are charming, down to the whimsical tone of their language.2
    • ✤ I could have phoned you with all this, Tallulah, but knowing you as I have over the years, when you and I have both been a party to some of Duncan’s little imbroglios, I thought I should talk to you in person.3
    • ✤ He [Edward Michael Adler] was inducted into the imbroglio of the Vietnam War, which so many of his age group and middle class Orthodox Jewish upbringing easily avoided by staying in university or going into the clergy. He didn’t.4
    • ✤ [David] Cameron’s decision to hold a referendum alters the chemistry of politics. The casual way he offered a simple Yes–No referendum to Scotland in 2011 has led to a quasi-insoluble imbroglio over the future of the British Constitution.5

Etymology

Borrowed from Italian imbroglio (“tangle, entanglement, muddle”) (im-, alternative form of in- (prefix forming verbs denoting derivation) + broglio (“confusion; intrigue, fraud, rigging, stuffing”); see also imbrogliare (“to tangle”)), cognate with and probably from an earlier form of French embrouiller (“to embroil, muddle”) (em- (“em-”), a form of en- (“en-”, prefix meaning ‘ caused ’) + brouiller (“to confuse, mix up”)). Doublet of embroil.

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ɪmˈbɹəʊljəʊ/
  • (General American) IPA: /ɪmˈbɹoʊljoʊ/
  • Audio (General American): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -əʊljəʊ
  • Hyphenation: im‧bro‧glio

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. 1816, Thomas Gray, “A Long Story”, in John Mitford, editor, The Works of Thomas Gray; Vol. I Containing the Poems, with Critical Notes; a Life of the Author; and an Essay on His Poetry; by the Rev. John Mitford, volume I, London: Printed for J. Mawman, 39, Ludgate-Street, by S. Hamilton, Weybridge, Surrey, →OCLC, page 133, lines 65–68: ↩

  2. 2010 July, Erica Jong, “My Italy”, in Barrie Kerper, editor, Tuscany and Umbria: The Collected Traveler (An Inspired Companion Guide), New York, N.Y.: Vintage Departures, Vintage Books, →ISBN: ↩

  3. 2013, Frances Whiting, chapter 19, in Walking on Trampolines, Sydney, N.S.W.: Pan Macmillan Australia, →ISBN; trade paperback edition, New York, N.Y.: Gallery Books, February 2015, →ISBN page 207: ↩

  4. 2015, Judith Bendheim Guedalia, “Stop and Smell the Flowers”, in A Neuropsychologist’s Journal: Interventions and “Judi-isms”, Jerusalem; New York, N.Y.: Urim Publications, →ISBN, page 240: ↩

  5. 2015, Denis MacShane, “A Centrifugal Europe”, in Brexit: How Britain Will Leave Europe, London: I.B. Tauris, →ISBN, page 21: ↩

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Secondary

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