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

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

Fortunately, clear skies will bless BTS for the live event, although Netflix’s Mussman admits without elaboration, “There was a rain plan.”

From Salon ● Mar. 21, 2026

“No,” he said without hesitation or further elaboration.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 17, 2026

In her introduction, the translator Anne McKnight presents “Long Take” as an elaboration on “Something Like an Autobiography,” the filmmaker’s 1981 memoir.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 6, 2026

An interesting elaboration on the concept of conditional probability is known as Bayes’ theorem, first proved by Thomas Bayes in the eighteenth century.

From "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences" by John Allen Paulos

Here repeated rhythms are overlayed by a large ensemble featuring all the festival performers in ecstatic elaborations.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 12, 2025

"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

"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

“Every movie is a dream,” the husband in “Vortex” muses, and his elaborations on the idea might serve as a running commentary on the movie he’s in.

From New York Times ● Apr. 28, 2022

In church when she knelt, in the yard when she beat rugs, beneath the peach tree when she picked fruit, Desdemona’s feminine elaborations escaped the constraints of her drab, confining clothes.

From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides

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Related Words

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