sophisticate
Americannoun
adjective
verb (used with object)
-
sophisticates,
present (3rd person singular)
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sophisticated,
past participle, past
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sophisticating
present participle
-
to make less natural, simple, or ingenuous; make worldly-wise.
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to alter; pervert.
to sophisticate a meaning beyond recognition.
verb (used without object)
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sophisticates,
present (3rd person singular)
-
sophisticated,
past participle, past
-
sophisticating
present participle
verb
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(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
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has been sophisticatingperfect progressive
Past
-
sophisticatedsimple
-
had sophisticatedperfect
-
was sophisticatingprogressive
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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
Compared with the tense drama surrounding Zara and Bakhtiar, what happens to the filmmaker seems at first like comic relief — a fish-out-of-water caper about a big-city sophisticate snagged by rustic brambles.
From New York Times ● Dec. 22, 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
And then, to make matters worse, I heard my mother saying to Waverly: “True, cannot teach style. June not sophisticate like you. Must be born this way.”
From "The Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan
In 2006, My Chemical Romance — by then, an edgy screamo band turned ostentatious pop-punk dramatists — released “The Black Parade,” a flashy and theatrical opus that established the group as art-house emo sophisticates.
From New York Times ● Sep. 11, 2022
Quirky sophisticates know a restaurant's specialties, including the choices that aren't listed on the menu.
From Salon ● Aug. 27, 2022
Low rates serve financial sophisticates: Such rates send torrents of money in search of higher yields into the stock market.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 17, 2022
They moved to a small town, but they thought of themselves as cultural sophisticates, intelligent and liberal.
From Slate ● Apr. 8, 2020
He liked the idea of coffee quite a lot—a warm drink that gave you energy and had been for centuries associated with sophisticates and intellectuals.
From "An Abundance of Katherines" by John Green
While most part-time traders lack these pros’ computational prowess or technological advantages, the market’s growth will continue to draw other sophisticated players.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 3, 2026
It plays with sophisticated themes of writing, truth and trust: the complicated nature of the versions of ourselves we put on the page.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 1, 2026
"Our investigation indicates the accommodation was likely the victim of a sophisticated phishing attack by cyber criminals, which affected their own computer systems and led to temporary unauthorised access to the accommodation partner's Booking.com account."
From BBC ● 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
Most of the women were older than Mala; at least with their sophisticated hairdos and makeup they looked older.
From "Homeless Bird" by Gloria Whelan
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
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
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
As a rule, such colours when manufactured in England may be fairly assumed to be genuine; and certainly the respectable colourmen of the present day are not in the habit of sophisticating them.
From Field's Chromatography or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists by Thomas Salter
Byron and Shelley were always sophisticating about their verses; Keats sophisticated about nothing.
From Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century by George Paston
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.
