untie

Etymology

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

verb

1. (transitive) To loosen, as something interlaced or knotted; to disengage the parts of.
   to untie a knot
   Sacharissa's captive fain / Would untie his iron chain. 1645, Edmund Waller, To Amoret
2. (transitive) To free from fastening or from restraint; to let loose; to unbind.
3. To resolve; to unfold; to clear.
   They quicken sloth, perplexities untie. 1668, John Denham, Of Prudence (poem)
4. (intransitive) To become untied or loosed.
5. (programming, transitive) 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! 2002, Dave Roth, Win32 Perl Programming: The Standard Extensions, page 151