explicate
Americanverb (used with object)
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to make plain or clear; explain; interpret.
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to develop (a principle, theory, etc.).
verb
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to make clear or explicit; explain
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to formulate or develop (a theory, hypothesis, etc)
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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explicatornoun
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reexplicateverb (used with object)
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explicativeadjective
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unexplicatedadjective
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well-explicatedadjective
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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explicatesimple
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explicatessimple
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have explicatedperfect
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has explicatedperfect
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am explicatingprogressive
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are explicatingprogressive
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is explicatingprogressive
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have been explicatingperfect progressive
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has been explicatingperfect progressive
Past
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explicatedsimple
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had explicatedperfect
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was explicatingprogressive
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were explicatingprogressive
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had been explicatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of explicate
1525–35; < Latin explicātus unfolded, set forth, past participle of explicāre, equivalent to ex- ex- 1 + plicāre to fold; see -ate 1
Explanation
To explicate is to explain or interpret something, maybe putting it in plain terms to make it more comprehensible for others. It might help to remember that it begins with "ex-," like the word explain, which is similar in meaning. The verb explicate comes from the Latin explicāre, which means "to unfold or unravel." This is a good description of a word that means to explain something to make it clearer and more easily understandable. Think of a puzzle or mystery: when you solve it, you sometimes have to explicate how you arrived at the solution, telling how you used the clues given to find the answer.
Vocabulary lists containing explicate
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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.
See Examples For:
"But I do think it's fair to say the burden is on the firm to explicate and help develop appropriate guardrails to prevent nefarious uses."
From Science Daily ● May 2, 2024
Acosta then asked Dean to explicate what happens if Trump commits perjury, and whether he could be prosecuted for lying.
From Salon ● Nov. 6, 2023
Mind-scientists labor to explicate us, with theories ranging from Freudian psychoanalysis to neuro-evo-psycho-cognitive whatever.
From Scientific American ● Dec. 24, 2022
“This is an issue that is not going to be simple to explicate, excavate or decide,” said Commissioner Merryl H. Tisch, who suggested shelving the motion for further research.
From New York Times ● Oct. 18, 2021
The evening’s speaker might be a graduate student assigned to explicate a recent paper from Europe, or a visiting luminary discussing his own work.
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
No one understands, explicates and empathizes with mothers and daughters, love and pain, life and all it entails, quite like Ms. Hudes.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 12, 2025
Each of the songs explicates a place and time of an incident or an idea in the lives of the protagonists.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 22, 2024
On the Michelangelo side, “All Things Move” admirably explicates the art of the Sistine Chapel and the history of its moment.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 3, 2023
Joni Mitchell's song "Big Yellow Taxi" explicates this duality nicely: there is paradise, and there are parking lots, and never the twain shall meet.
From Salon ● Mar. 22, 2020
According to this Hypothesis he explicates all the Operations of Plants and Animals, without having any recourse to the Soul.
From Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 Giving some Accompt of the present Undertakings, Studies, and Labours of the Ingenious in many considerable parts of the World by Oldenburg, Henry
Then there’s a cultural element, he explicated, of “bringing in my Japanese-Midwest heritage by using an ingredient like panko, filtering it through the Italian-American-ish culinary lens.”
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 7, 2024
“What really needs to be explicated is not the plain vanilla meaning of insurrection but the whole phrase - insurrection against the United States Constitution,” Delahunty testified on Friday.
From Washington Times ● Nov. 3, 2023
This is all explicated with fast, funny dialogue and therapy-style lessons delivered by an actual therapy dog.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 20, 2022
"Although no laws are explicated in place to limit use or IVF or change practice, this is the time to act in order to not let it happen," Shahine said.
From Salon ● May 10, 2022
This phenomenon occurs for a number of reasons explicated in the more detailed findings of fact supra.
From Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling by United States District Court For The Eastern District Of Pennsylvania
Mr. Meslow does an excellent job explicating the ensuing tensions between ABC and the showrunners, which would ensure that the program was always a deeply flawed translation of its creators’ vision.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 17, 2026
It’s perfectly OK to mention that, theoretically, traveling on a train is traveling through time, without later explicating the Einsteinian theory behind the assertion.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 25, 2023
Pinchin spends several pages explicating their personal animus, which ostensibly stems from an arcane debate over the location of bluefin spawning grounds but seems really to be about how scientists should position themselves vis-a-vis industry.
From Salon ● Aug. 2, 2023
Further, most of these decisions were engaged in a similar endeavor: explicating how rights relate to one another, and why the structure of constitutional law requires some unenumerated rights in order to function.
From Slate ● Jun. 25, 2023
When the things are true in several senses, the not explicating in what sense I mean the words is not a criminal reservation....
From Apologia pro Vita Sua by Newman, John Henry
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.
