DictionaryAI

complicate

SayKOM-pli-kaytUS/ˈkɑmplɪkeɪt//ˈkɒmplɪkeɪt/
As an adjectiveKOM-pli-kuht

Formscomplicates, complicating, complicated

4 meanings of complicate

Practice

  1. 1
    verbtransitive
    To make something more complex, intricate, or difficult to deal with.

    New regulations only complicate an already cumbersome approval process.

    Introducing a third investor complicated the negotiations considerably.

    Similarconfuse, muddle, entangle, hamper, compound

    Oppositesimplify, clarify, streamline, ease

    Note

    Folding is the picture underneath. The verb comes from Latin complicātus, built from con- 'together' and plicō 'to fold, weave', and it is a cousin of complex. Its natural objects are matters already under way: a question, a negotiation, a process. Arthur Edward Waite's Devil-Worship in France (1896) has 'mendacities and forgeries which complicate the question of Lucifer.'

  2. 2
    verbtransitive
    To draw a person or thing into a tangled, convoluted affair.

    The forged documents complicated several executives in the fraud investigation.

    Reporters worried the leak would complicate the mayor in a scandal she knew nothing about.

    Similarimplicate, involve, embroil, entangle

    Oppositeexonerate, clear

    Note

    Here the object is a person rather than a problem: someone is complicated in an affair, a scandal or an issue. The construction takes in. It works comfortably in the passive (John has been complicated in the affair) and even reflexively, as a warning not to complicate yourself in matters beyond you. Unlike the everyday 'make complex' sense, it says who is entangled, not what grows harder.

  3. 3
    adjectivearchaic
    Complex or intricate; made up of many interconnected parts.

    The poet traced a complicate web of fate binding the doomed lovers.

    How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, / How complicate, how wonderful, is Man!
    1745, Edward Young, Night-Thoughts
    Note

    A poet's adjective, long since overtaken by complicated. Edward Young's Night-Thoughts (1745) marvels, 'How complicate, how wonderful, is Man!' It is now rare and belongs to verse or deliberately elevated prose, where its older ring is the point. It compares with more and most (more complicate). In everyday writing it reads as a slip for complicated, so use it only when the archaic effect is intended.

Less common meaning

  1. 4
    adjectiveobsolete
    Twined or wound together so the parts are interwoven; intertwined.

    The roots ran complicate beneath the orchard floor.

    Threads of gold lay complicate among the dark wool.

    Note

    The literal picture behind the word, now obsolete: things folded or wound into one another, true to the Latin 'fold together' that the everyday verb descends from. Roots or threads could lie complicate. Today it survives only as a deliberate archaism. In ordinary prose, intertwined or interwoven says the same thing without the period flavor.

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Origin

First recorded in the early 17th century, it was borrowed from Latin complicātus, the past participle of complicō ("to fold together"), from con- ("together") plus plicō ("to fold, weave, knit"); compare complex.