sophisticate
Americannoun
adjective
verb (used with object)
-
sophisticates,
present (3rd person singular)
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sophisticated,
past participle, past
-
sophisticating
present participle
-
to make less natural, simple, or ingenuous; make worldly-wise.
-
to alter; pervert.
to sophisticate a meaning beyond recognition.
verb (used without object)
-
sophisticates,
present (3rd person singular)
-
sophisticated,
past participle, past
-
sophisticating
present participle
verb
-
(tr) to make (someone) less natural or innocent, as by education
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to pervert or corrupt (an argument, etc) by sophistry
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(tr) to make more complex or refined
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rare to falsify (a text, etc) by alterations
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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sophisticatesimple
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sophisticatessimple
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have sophisticatedperfect
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has sophisticatedperfect
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am sophisticatingprogressive
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are sophisticatingprogressive
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is sophisticatingprogressive
-
have been sophisticatingperfect progressive
-
has been sophisticatingperfect progressive
Past
-
sophisticatedsimple
-
had sophisticatedperfect
-
was sophisticatingprogressive
-
were sophisticatingprogressive
-
had been sophisticatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of sophisticate
1350–1400; Middle English (adj. and v.) < Medieval Latin sophisticātus (past participle of sophisticāre to tamper with, disguise, trick with words), equivalent to Latin sophistic ( us ) ( see sophistic) + -ātus -ate 1
Explanation
To sophisticate is to make someone or something less innocent. A sophisticate is also a worldly, cultured person. The root soph in sophisticate has to do with knowledge, and if a person gets sophisticated, they learn new things, especially about the social world. Parents sophisticate their children by teaching them table manners. Going to college sophisticates many people by exposing them to new ideas and other cultures. After becoming sophisticated, people are less natural and innocent, but more cultured. A sophisticate is also a worldly person. Sophisticates do things like go to the opera and drink fine wine.
Vocabulary lists containing sophisticate
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:
As anchored as he is to Beirut, she is a transnationally minded sophisticate who is in a major hurry to move to Germany.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 23, 2026
With a virgin piña colada in my hand, I was no longer a silly little girl in a Laura Ashley dress, but a budding sophisticate sipping a fancy cocktail with maraschino cherry-stained red lips.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 11, 2022
Those who know Lee only as his Gi-hun character would barely recognize the dapper sophisticate sitting with excellent posture in a small greenroom.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 2, 2022
As Burrows told the New York Times in 1983, the trio “wanted to create a show around a Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy-type relationship” between a sophisticate and an average Joe.
From Slate ● Jun. 22, 2020
Johannesburg had always been depicted as a city of dreams, a place where one could transform oneself from a poor peasant to a wealthy sophisticate, a city of danger and of opportunity.
From "Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela
With its expressionistic, skillfully lit pastels, “My Father’s Dragon” appears, at first, to be a high-tier cartoon for young sophisticates, as one might expect from the Oscar nominee Nora Twomey, who previously directed “The Breadwinner.”
From New York Times ● Nov. 10, 2022
Quirky sophisticates know a restaurant's specialties, including the choices that aren't listed on the menu.
From Salon ● Aug. 27, 2022
They moved to a small town, but they thought of themselves as cultural sophisticates, intelligent and liberal.
From Slate ● Apr. 8, 2020
In the fickle calculus of what defines fashionable, New Yorkers have always been a constant, the seen-it-all sophisticates whose idea of normalcy includes riding an impossibly overcrowded subway and inhabiting a ridiculously overpriced apartment.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 3, 2020
We stood out among these city sophisticates in their sturdy lace-up shoes or good-looking pumps.
From "I Will Always Write Back" by Caitlin Alifirenka and Martin Ganda
It said the ruling recognised that the commission, Campbell and others had been "subject to sophisticated deception".
From Barron's ● Oct. 1, 2026
Although its ancestors lived on land, Austronaga had already developed sophisticated adaptations for life in the water by the Middle Triassic.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 29, 2026
The group can produce or modify some weapons in Yemen, while relying on Iran for more sophisticated systems and technical assistance.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 29, 2026
Veteran voice actor Michihiro Ikemizu, 83, also expressed solidarity with Tsuda -- but said that AI, however sophisticated it gets, will never outperform human actors.
From Barron's ● Sep. 27, 2026
By then, you might guess that you’re typing on a very sophisticated cipher machine.
From "The Woman All Spies Fear" by Amy Butler Greenfield
These were coached, in the usual masterly manner, sophisticating and perverting truth.
From Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked by C. H. Thomas
But the time is short; there is none to waste on idle questionings, none to spend on sophisticating conscience—time only for deciding as conscience bids.
From The Expositor's Bible: The Gospel of St John, Vol. II by Marcus Dods
Next is a woe on those who play fast and loose with plain morality, sophisticating conscience, and sapping the foundations of law.
From Expositions of Holy Scripture Isaiah and Jeremiah by Alexander Maclaren
Nothing comes to him, not spoiled by the sophisticating medium of moral uses.
From The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 2 Elia and The Last Essays of Elia by Charles Lamb
In these aspects, at least, our shores are still primitive; they still know the primal force of wind and waves: there is no sophisticating, no taming of these.
From The Cornwall Coast by Arthur L. (Arthur Leslie) Salmon
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.
