unspool

verb

1. To remove (film, cotton, etc.) from a spool; unwind.

   “Next, unspool twenty cubits of the thin silver wire thread and cut this length in half. If you have less than twenty cubits, unspool all you have, and cut it in two equal parts.”

   “He lifted out the roll of tickets and began to unspool a dozen.”

2. To reduce the thrust of a jet engine to idle in flight.

   “During this 14-second period, the airplane accelerated to about 173 KIAS, and the first officer retarded the throttles. By 1805:15, despite the instructions in the Delta L-1011 Pilot Operating Manual (POM), which states, “do not unspool the engines,” all three engines were either at, or very near, flight idle EPR and remained at that thrust level until 1805:22.”

3. (slang)To play; to be screened.

   “Let all the films of Keaton and Wenders unspool blackly across your mind like the negative of the white line still unspooling down a road in God's imagination, long after the end of his road movie of the end of the world.”

   “Trailers for upcoming movies unspool—The Nutty Professor is playing on Tuesday, along with Cinderfella.”

4. (ambitransitive)To flow forth, unfold, or play out.

   “The landscape and the living figures of that summer, as in some umber-smeared snapshot found in the brittle black pages of an old album, had become more dusty and indistinct as time for me unspooled with negligent haste into my own middle age, yet that summer's agony still cried out for explanation.”

   “At first, he was vague about his reason for coming in, talking about his uncertainty regarding the future and a few other stressors, but as he let his story unspool, he revealed the real reason.”

   “I'd watch birds, trail my hands in the water, duck under the boughs of sweeper trees, and watch the river unspool before me.”

   “All the things I couldn't know sat somewhere inside, embroidered into me—maybe not quite fixed to the point of inevitability but waiting, in any event, for a chance to unspool.”

   “Once we realize that gun ownership is now deemed a constitutionally protected, legal right, we cannot know how it may unspool over time.”

5. (ambitransitive)To lose or cause to lose one's composure; to fall apart.

   “Normally, the worse a situation got, the calmer and more efficient Kelly became. But not this time. This was so bizarre, her mind unspooled.”

   “This tragic illness which had so unspooled members of her family in the past was now directly on her doorstep maybe caused by the incessant explosions he had heard in South Africa.”

   “I survey the damage, the guilt enough to make me glitchy, and if you get too glitchy you start to unspool, which means you end up a quivering hot mess in the fetal position, vomiting, your body's way of ending the rush to spare your mind.”

6. (ambitransitive)To relax or become relaxed; to unwind.

   “After that, he felt exhausted — but unspooled inside — and drove to his Wilshire Boulevard home.”

   “Instead, Marion felt herself unspool inside and it was lovely and she wanted to touch Joe Lanigan's arm, lightly, as she wanted to smile to him and even curl herself at his feet.”

   “The moment I saw the sign, tension unspooled inside me. Haven's Bay was the place I went when I needed to get away, although I hadn't been here in almost four years. It was home in a way that nowhere else was.”