- past participle of complicate.
- past tense form of complicate.
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of complicated
First recorded in 1640–50; complicate + -ed 2
Explanation
When things get complicated, they are no longer simple and straightforward. If you are asked a question that would require a long, detailed answer, you might just say, "It's complicated." The word complicated came about in the 1640's to mean "tangled" or "difficult to unravel." This makes sense, considering it came from the Latin verb complicāre, meaning "to fold together." Consider that something with many folds is more complicated than something flat. Novelist Robert Ludlum said, "Life is extremely complicated," but Confucius long ago suggested that "Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated." Just having those two opposing viewpoints indicates how complicated life can be.
Vocabulary lists containing complicated
Schooled
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"Sorry, Wrong Number," Vocabulary from the play
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Excerpts from "To Kill a Mockingbird"
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
"Where it gets even more complicated is that there are some goods that go back and forth across the border multiple times," he said.
From Barron's ● Oct. 11, 2026
Zhuravlyov's case could be merged, in theory, at a later date, though that would be complicated.
From BBC ● Oct. 10, 2026
"It is now possible to predict the properties of some complicated materials purely through computation without referring to experiment," says Chan, who is the senior author of the paper and a Simons Investigator in Physics.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 10, 2026
I mean, his relationship with nostalgia was really complicated because on the one hand, he has this idyllic childhood in Binghamton, New York, you know: doting parents, popular kid, dated all over the place.
From Salon ● Oct. 10, 2026
Not only did Ayana work in planetary science, but she also had really cool hair braided in a complicated pattern with beads on the ends.
From "Sir Fig Newton and the Science of Persistence" by Sonja Thomas
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
