Elaborated

How to spell elaborated

10 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce elaborated

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does elaborated mean?

1. verbDeveloped, explained, or presented something in greater detail.

Elaborated in a sentence

• She elaborated on her proposal when the board asked for specifics.

• The manual elaborated each step so that nothing was left to guesswork.

Where does elaborated come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb elaborare, meaning 'to work out' or 'to produce by labour', which was built from the prefix ex- 'out, fully' and laborare 'to work', itself from labor meaning 'toil' or 'effort'. The past participle elaboratus carried the sense of something carefully and fully worked out, and that idea of painstaking effort survives in the modern meaning of adding rich detail. English adopted the verb during the middle of the 1500s, at first describing things produced through hard work and only later settling on the now familiar sense of developing an idea more fully or explaining at greater length. The shared root labor links it directly to the everyday words 'labour' and 'laboratory', the latter being literally a place of work. Remembering that buried labor in the middle of the word is the easiest way to keep the single 'l' and the spelling steady, since the temptation is to drop or double letters around that unstressed centre.

How the word is built

• e- (from ex-: out, fully)
• labor (work, toil)
• -ate (verb-forming)
• -ed (past tense)