explicate
Americanverb (used with object)
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explicates,
present (3rd person singular)
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explicated,
past participle, past
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explicating
present participle
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to make plain or clear; explain; interpret.
-
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.
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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:
We chronicle, explicate, elucidate and constantly “re-adjudicate” historical events and personages.
From Salon ● Jul. 30, 2024
"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
She argued that a critic’s task was not to search for meaning, but to explicate the form and texture of a poem.
From New York Times ● Mar. 26, 2024
Mind-scientists labor to explicate us, with theories ranging from Freudian psychoanalysis to neuro-evo-psycho-cognitive whatever.
From Scientific American ● Dec. 24, 2022
I know the difference between a raceme and a rhizome, I explicate photosynthesis, I can spell Scrofulariaciae.
From "Cat's Eye" by Margaret Atwood
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
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
Gefter takes the reader inside so many of Avedon’s photo shoots, and so deftly explicates his work, that you’re thirsty to sate your eyes with Avedon’s actual images.
From New York Times ● Oct. 19, 2020
Effectively a pastiche of St Aubyn's style, Smith's close reading illustrates and explicates simultaneously.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 7, 2018
In this remark, Dacier explicates Aristotle's injunction that the poet should sketch the general outline of the fable before filling in episodes and naming characters, thus making it general and universal.
From The Preface to Aristotle's Art of Poetry by Samuel Holt Monk
The central frieze’s action is explicated by Latin captions and framed by upper and lower borders.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 26, 2026
“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 Seattle Times ● Nov. 3, 2023
“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
That point is meticulously explicated by TechCrunch's Natasha Lomas in her surgical analysis.
From Salon ● Aug. 11, 2023
True, as his subject lies; but he might have altered the shape of his argument, and explicated them better in single scenes.
From Every Man out of His Humour by Ben Jonson
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
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
But to physicists bent on explicating those fundamental laws, black holes are a Coney Island of mysteries and imagination.
From New York Times ● Oct. 10, 2022
Precious Auntie, devastated, leaves a sheath of papers for her daughter to read, explicating the sorrowful and somber truth of their generational legacy.
From Seattle Times ● May 31, 2022
But there, covered with alluring awe, a wall of impenetrable mystery confronts us with its baffling "Thus far, and no farther, shall thine explicating gaze read the secrets of destiny."
From The Destiny of the Soul A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life by William Rounseville Alger
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