elaboration
[ih-lab-uh-rey-shuh n]
- an act or instance of elaborating.
- the state of being elaborated; elaborateness.
- something that is elaborated.
- 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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Origin of elaboration
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for elaboration
Contemporary Examples
Lack of elaboration is a virus that continually infects the book, sometimes having a sickening effect on the reader.
It is neither the time nor the place to ask for elaboration.
Historical Examples
The craving for excitement and for elaboration has ruined that blessing.
Howards EndE. M. Forster
He defined the nature and crime of treason with elaboration and circumlocution.
The Shadow of a CrimeHall Caine
It was an elaboration of the theories contained in his earlier book.
SocialismJohn Spargo
The system represents a series of compromises, not the elaboration of a theory.
The English Utilitarians, Volume I.Leslie Stephen
A youth of this kind is raw material in its first stage of elaboration.
Elsie VennerOliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Word Origin and History for elaboration
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
elaboration
(ĭ-lăb′ə-rā′shən)- The process of working out in detail by labor and study.
- The mental process occurring partly during dreaming and partly during the recalling or telling of a dream, by means of which the latent content of the dream is brought into increasingly more coherent and logical order, resulting in the manifest content of the dream.
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The American Heritage® Stedman's Medical Dictionary
Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.