Elaborate

How to spell elaborate

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce elaborate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does elaborate mean?

1. adjectiveInvolving many carefully arranged or complicated details.
2. verbTo develop or explain something in greater detail.

Elaborate in a sentence

• adjective

  The wedding featured an elaborate seating plan that took weeks to finalise.

• verb

  The manager asked the analyst to elaborate on the quarterly figures.

• adjective

  Their security system was far more elaborate than the budget allowed.

• verb

  Please elaborate on your proposal before the committee votes.

Where does elaborate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin elaborare, meaning 'to work out' or 'to produce by labour', which combined the prefix ex- (here meaning 'out' or 'thoroughly') with laborare, 'to work or toil', itself built on labor, the plain Latin word for 'work' and 'effort'. The past participle elaboratus described something that had been worked out with great care, and English adopted it in the sixteenth century, first as a verb for developing something in detail and soon after as an adjective for anything wrought with painstaking effort. The same labor root sits inside everyday relatives such as 'labour', 'laboratory', and 'collaborate', all of which carry that core sense of work. For spellers the trap is the unstressed middle: the second syllable is stressed (e-LAB-), leaving the vowels in '-orate' as faint schwas, which tempts writers to drop or swap letters. Remembering the visible word 'labor' sitting in the centre keeps the spelling on track.

How the word is built

• e- (from ex-: out, fully)
• labor (work, toil)
• -ate (verb/adjective suffix)