elaboration

American  

[ih-lab-uh-ray-shuhn] / ɪˌlæb əˈreɪ ʃən /

noun

• elaborations
  plural

1. an act or instance of elaborating.

2. the state of being elaborated; elaborateness.

3. something that is elaborated.

4. Psychiatry. an unconscious process of expanding and embellishing a detail, especially while recalling and describing a representation in a dream so that latent content of the dream is brought into a logical and comprehensible order.

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• self-elaboration
  noun

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• elaborations
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of elaboration

First recorded in 1570–80; from Latin ēlabōrātiōn-, stem of ēlabōrātiō, from ēlabōrāt(us) “worked out” (past participle of ēlabōrāre “to work out, produce through labor”; see elaborate) + -iō -ion

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Explanation

Elaboration means "adding details." Kids are famous for answering "good" when asked how school was and "nothing" when asked what they did there. If pressed for elaboration, they might talk about recess, lunch, and even what they learned. Elaboration is the result of going that extra mile, such as when your history teacher asks for five paragraphs on the Fall of Rome, and you write three pages, or when your friend, instead of giving you a regular birthday card, creates a mini-scrapbook with photos and mementos from the past year. As you can see, elaboration takes time and energy because you go into greater detail than usual.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

elaboration elaborations

The navy did not say how the 16 were encountered, and the Salvadoran military did not respond to requests for elaboration.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 15, 2026

“Time’s Second Arrow” is an elaboration and defense of that controversial article.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 15, 2026

Roberts wondered whether that phrasing itself suggested confusion, either by counsel or by the trial judge, about whether the objection was then being made or merely marked for later elaboration.

From Slate ● Apr. 10, 2026

Lilly did not respond to a request for elaboration on the point.

From Barron's ● Nov. 17, 2025

But I worried it might seem like the desperate elaboration of a child caught in a lie.

From "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss

"These results help us understand the evolutionary history of horns and antlers and could suggest that differences in other ruminant cranial appendages, like ossicones and pronghorns, are also elaborations on a shared ancestral cranial appendage."

From Science Daily ● May 20, 2024

Yet these elaborations — note the words “recycled” and “always-awake” — have less to do with the machinery of the station than they do with the orbiting minds of the humans on board.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 11, 2023

"I was like, 'No-one's gonna sign up for this. There are just too many cameras pointed at me, there are too many ridiculous elaborations on my life'," she told the Grammy Museum.

From BBC ● Oct. 13, 2023

His elaborations are elegant, persuasive and come to a surprisingly feminist conclusion — that female desire shaped evolution.

From New York Times ● Dec. 7, 2017

The directness of his questions and his subsequent elaborations threw her.

From "The Underground Railroad: A Novel" by Colson Whitehead

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