complication
Pluralcomplications (some meanings)
- 1The state of being complicated; an intricate or confused arrangement of parts.
The sheer complication of the design overwhelmed the new engineers.
Adding more characters only increased the complication of the plot.
Similarcomplexity, intricacy, convolution
Oppositesimplicity, clarity
- 2The act or process of making something more complicated.
The needless complication of the form-filling frustrated nearly every applicant.
Each amendment contributed to the steady complication of an originally simple contract.
Similarelaboration, convolution
Oppositesimplification, streamlining
Note
The action noun built from the verb: complicate plus -ion, by way of Middle French and Latin complicatio. It names something being done, often step by step, so it sits naturally with words like steady, needless or further. When the result is meant rather than the process, the same word shifts to the state of being complicated. A quick test is whether "the complicating of" could stand in its place.
- 3A secondary disease or condition that arises alongside a primary illness and modifies it, though not necessarily linked to it.
Pneumonia is a frequent complication in patients recovering from severe influenza.
Doctors monitored her closely for any complication following the transplant.
Note
Medicine attaches a careful condition to the word. A complication coexists with a main disease and changes its course, but it need not be caused by it, so a second illness that merely arrives alongside the first still counts. In clinical writing it usually takes of, in or following: a complication of the illness, in recovering patients, following surgery.
- 4A function in a watch or clock that goes beyond the basic display of time.
The watch's most prized complication displays the current phase of the moon.
Collectors will pay a premium for a chronograph complication built into a slim case.
Note
Watchmakers use it as a countable noun: a watch has a complication, or several, and collectors count them. A tourbillon, a chiming mode and a date display all qualify. The term draws on the sense of intricacy, because each extra function makes the movement harder to build. The most ambitious pieces are called grand complications, as in Stacy Perman's A Grand Complication (2013).
- 5A person who does not fit into the overall scheme of things, someone who has intruded where they do not belong.
To the tight-knit committee, the newcomer was just a complication who slowed their work.
The detective's tidy theory had no place for the stranger seen at the dock, a complication she kept coming back to.
Similarinterloper, intruder, outsider, anomaly
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of complication apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origin
Borrowed from Middle French 'complication', from Latin 'complicatio' (accusative 'complicationem'); it can also be analysed as 'complicate' plus the suffix '-ion'.