Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive & intransitive verb To make or become complex or perplexing.
  • transitive & intransitive verb To twist or become twisted together.
  • adjective Complex, intricate, and involved.
  • adjective Biology Folded longitudinally one or several times, as certain leaves or the wings of some insects.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Composed of interconnected parts; complex.
  • Intricate; involved.
  • In botany, folded upon itself: as, a complicate embryo: same as conduplicate.
  • In entomology, folded longitudinally once or several times, as the wings of wasps, the posterior wings of grasshoppers, etc.
  • To render complex or intricate; fold or twist together; entangle; intertwine; interweave; involve: as, to complicate matters, he was suddenly taken ill.
  • To form by combination of parts or elements; combine; compound.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Composed of two or more parts united; complex; complicated; involved.
  • adjective (Bot.) Folded together, or upon itself, with the fold running lengthwise.
  • transitive verb To fold or twist together; to combine intricately; to make complex; to combine or associate so as to make intricate or difficult.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb transitive To fold or twist together; to combine intricately; to make complex; to combine or associate so as to make intricate or difficult.
  • verb transitive to expose involvement in a convoluted matter.
  • adjective obsolete Intertwined.
  • adjective poetic Complex, complicated.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb make more complicated
  • verb make more complex, intricate, or richer

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin complicāre, complicāt-, to fold together : com-, com- + plicāre, to fold; see plek- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin complicatus, past participle of complicare ("to fold together"), from com- ("together") + plicare ("to fold, weave, knit"); see plaid, and compare complex

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Examples

  • What all of these data make clear, and future studies are sure to further complicate, is that the simplistic association of "intelligent" with "atheist" is not backed by the evidence.

    Amarnath Amarasingam: Are American College Professors Religious? Amarnath Amarasingam 2010

  • What all of these data make clear, and future studies are sure to further complicate, is that the simplistic association of "intelligent" with "atheist" is not backed by the evidence.

    Amarnath Amarasingam: Are American College Professors Religious? Amarnath Amarasingam 2010

  • What all of these data make clear, and future studies are sure to further complicate, is that the simplistic association of "intelligent" with "atheist" is not backed by the evidence.

    Amarnath Amarasingam: Are American College Professors Religious? Amarnath Amarasingam 2010

  • What all of these data make clear, and future studies are sure to further complicate, is that the simplistic association of "intelligent" with "atheist" is not backed by the evidence.

    Amarnath Amarasingam: Are American College Professors Religious? Amarnath Amarasingam 2010

  • What all of these data make clear, and future studies are sure to further complicate, is that the simplistic association of "intelligent" with "atheist" is not backed by the evidence.

    Amarnath Amarasingam: Are American College Professors Religious? Amarnath Amarasingam 2010

  • AMANPOUR: And how much do the militants complicate -- in other words, using potential humanitarian aid to control the people?

    CNN Transcript Sep 29, 2009 2009

  • UND also fears keeping the nickname will complicate its plans to join the Big Sky athletics conference in July.

    The Seattle Times 2011

  • Giuseppe's talk will show examples of how to use Gearman for remote installation and how to call a complicate data warehousing function written in Perl from any other language, with no knowledge of Perl at all. to this page.

    Sun Bloggers 2009

  • Some missing mode and options labels complicate navigation, though.

    IGN Wii 2009

  • The latter does not so much "complicate" our response as readers as divert our attention away from the exigencies of reading.

    Principles of Literary Criticism 2010

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