elaborate

comparative more elaborate · superlative most elaborate

1. Complex, detailed, or sophisticated.

   After reading a long, elaborate description, I was impressed but no wiser.

   Synonyms: fussy

2. Intricate, fancy, flashy, or showy.

   I stared for hours at the elaborate pattern in the rug.

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   The house was a big elaborate limestone affair, evidently new. Winter sunshine sparkled on lace-hung casement, on glass marquise, and the burnished bronze foliations of grille and door.

   1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, chapter I, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC

   Synonyms: busy

present singular third person elaborates · participle present elaborating · participle past elaborated · past elaborated

1. transitiveТo develop in detail or complexity.

   The notion of blood purity was first elaborated in Europe, where it was used to separate Old Christians from Spain’s New Christians—women and men of Jewish and Muslim origin whose ancestors had converted to Christianity.

   2009, Irene Silverblatt, “Foreword”, in Andrew B. Fisher, Matthew D. O'hara, editors, Imperial Subjects: Race and Identity in Colonial Latin America, page xi

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   […] by the time of the subsequent coronation, when the Prussian king put the crown on his own head in child-like belief of the obsolete doctrine called divine right, the untiring statesman had elaborated his scheme of reform.

   1871, “Bismarck”, in All the Year Round, volume 5, page 129

   Synonyms: work out, explicate

2. intransitivesometimesTo expand/enlarge in detail.

   Could you elaborate on the plot for your novel for me?

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   What do you mean you didn't come home last night? Would you care to elaborate?