Intricate \In"tri*cate\, a. [L. intricatus, p. p. of intricare
to entangle, perplex. Cf. Intrigue, Extricate.]
Entangled; involved; perplexed; complicated; difficult to
understand, follow, arrange, or adjust; as, intricate
machinery, labyrinths, accounts, plots, etc.
[1913 Webster]
His style was fit to convey the most intricate business
to the understanding with the utmost clearness.
--Addison.
[1913 Webster]
The nature of man is intricate. --Burke.
Syn: Intricate, Complex, Complicated.
Usage: A thing is complex when it is made up of parts; it is
complicated when those parts are so many, or so
arranged, as to make it difficult to grasp them; it is
intricate when it has numerous windings and confused
involutions which it is hard to follow out. What is
complex must be resolved into its parts; what is
complicated must be drawn out and developed; what is
intricate must be unraveled.
[1913 Webster]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Intricate \In"tri*cate\, v. t.
To entangle; to involve; to make perplexing. [Obs.]
[1913 Webster]
It makes men troublesome, and intricates all wise
discourses. --Jer. Taylor.
[1913 Webster]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
intricate
adj : highly involved or intricate; "the Byzantine tax structure";
"convoluted legal language"; "convoluted reasoning";
"intricate needlework"; "an intricate labyrinth of
refined phraseology"; "the plot was too involved"; "a
knotty problem"; "got his way by labyrinthine
maneuvering"; "Oh, what a tangled web we weave"- Sir
Walter Scott; "tortuous legal procedures"; "tortuous
negotiations lasting for months" [syn: Byzantine, convoluted,
involved, knotty, labyrinthine, tangled, tortuous]
WordNet (r) 2.0
148 Moby Thesaurus words for "intricate":
Byzantine, Daedalian, Herculean, abstruse, amalgamated, ambiguous,
ambivalent, amphibious, anfractuous, arduous, baffling, balled up,
bewildering, beyond one, blended, bothering, brutal, combined,
complex, complicated, composite, compound, compounded, confounded,
confounding, confused, confusing, conglomerate, convoluted,
crabbed, cramp, critical, daedal, dappled, dedal, delicate,
demanding, devious, difficile, difficult, discomposing,
disconcerting, dismaying, distracting, disturbing, eclectic,
elaborate, embarrassing, embrangled, enigmatic, entangled,
equivocal, exacting, fancy, fifty-fifty, formidable, fouled up,
garbled, gordian, hairy, half-and-half, hard, hard to understand,
hard-earned, hard-fought, heterogeneous, implicated,
indiscriminate, involuted, involved, ironic, jawbreaking, jumbled,
knotted, knotty, laborious, labyrinthian, labyrinthine, loused up,
many-faceted, many-sided, matted, mazy, mean, meandering, medley,
messed up, mingled, miscellaneous, mixed, mixed up, motley,
mucked up, multifaceted, multifarious, multinational, multiracial,
mysterious, mystifying, no picnic, not easy, obfuscated, obscure,
obscured, operose, ornate, overtechnical, patchy, perplexed,
perplexing, perturbing, pluralistic, problematic, promiscuous,
puzzling, ramified, rigorous, rococo, rough, roundabout, rugged,
scrambled, screwed up, set with thorns, severe, sinuous, snarled,
sophisticated, spiny, steep, strenuous, subtle, syncretic, tangled,
tangly, thorny, thrown together, ticklish, toilsome, tortuous,
tough, tricky, twisted, uphill, upsetting, varied, wicked,
winding
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0
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