intricacy

plural intricacies

1. countableuncountableThe state or quality of being intricate or entangled.

   the intricacy of a knot

   2 more examples

   the intricacy of accounts

   the intricacy of a cause in controversy

2. countableuncountablePerplexity.

   1 more example

   The breadth of Creation makes it impossible for us to step back far enough to see the story that the tapestry tells; the intricacy of it, from the macro to the micro to the subatomic, makes it impossible for us to comprehend the megatrillions of connections between the threads in just one small fragment of the whole.

   2013, Dean Koontz, Deeply Odd, London: HarperCollins, →ISBN, page 121

   Synonyms: involution, complication, complexity

3. countableuncountableSomething which is intricate or complex.

   There are many intricacies in the plot of this novel.

   1 more example

   With the most patient assiduity he peered into the intricacies of unrevealed structure. No object was too minute, none too large, for his attention.

   1845, Jordan Roche Lynch, The Hunterian Oration, page 8