unrolls

Unrolls is the third-person singular present tense form of the verb unroll. The base verb unroll means to straighten or unfold something that is rolled up or wound, or to reveal contents that are concealed by rolling. In ordinary use, unrolls describes the act of deploying a rolled object so that its length, surface, or contents become accessible.

Common physical contexts include laying out or revealing rolled materials. A carpet, poster, map, or scroll may unroll as it is placed on a surface. A sleeping bag or a piece of fabric can unroll to assume its flat, usable form. In film and packaging, objects are often stored in a rolled state and then unrolled or unrolled during use. Figuratively, the phrase can describe events becoming clear or progressing, as in a process that unrolls over time.

In computing, unrolling appears in the term loop unrolling, a compiler optimization that expands the iterations of a loop to reduce control overhead and improve instruction-level parallelism. This can increase speed but at the cost of larger code size; many modern compilers apply unrolling automatically under certain conditions, while developers may apply it manually in performance-critical sections.

In geometry and related fields, unrolling can refer to flattening a curved surface onto a plane, such as unrolling a cylindrical surface to study its properties. The verb and its forms are primarily used in practical, technical, and descriptive contexts.

See also: unrolling, unfold.