sophisticate
Americannoun
adjective
verb (used with object)
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sophisticates,
present (3rd person singular)
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sophisticated,
past participle, past
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sophisticating
present participle
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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
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have been sophisticatingperfect progressive
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has been sophisticatingperfect progressive
Past
-
sophisticatedsimple
-
had sophisticatedperfect
-
was sophisticatingprogressive
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were sophisticatingprogressive
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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:
An otherwise urban-dwelling sophisticate, he cultivated a rustic demeanor for France’s benefit, uncharacteristically donning a coonskin hat and simple clothes to impress cosseted aristocrats and ordinary Parisians alike.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 2026
It pulls people in on the promise of speaking effortless French in a Parisian bakery, on being a sophisticate with the drive to learn another language.
From Slate ● Jul. 25, 2023
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
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
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
But her honest voice and honest cooking caused Manhattan and Brooklyn sophisticates to clamor for her beautifully prepared Southern food.
From Salon ● May 25, 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
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
“There’s a sophisticated method to examine the strokes to examine how it was made and what kind of tools were used,” she added.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 14, 2026
Each cell can operate as a sophisticated computing unit in its own right, with computational abilities comparable to those of a deep neural network.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 13, 2026
"I thought I was such a sophisticated older man," he said.
From BBC ● Aug. 12, 2026
Systematic strategies, employed by big hedge funds and some institutional managers, use sophisticated algorithms and data inputs to make investing decisions.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 12, 2026
“These two girls proved that in their Yaks they could fight the men in the more sophisticated aircraft,” Mariya said.
From "A Thousand Sisters" by Elizabeth Wein
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
Sophisticā′tion, act of sophisticating, adulterating, or injuring by mixture; Sophis′ticātor, one who sophisticates or adulterates; Sophis′ticism, the philosophy or the methods of the sophists; Soph′istress, a she-sophist; Soph′istry, specious but fallacious reasoning.
From Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (part 4 of 4: S-Z and supplements) by Various
Is it possible the Wringhims, and the sophisticating wretch who is in conjunction with them, the mother of my late beautiful and amiable young master, can have effected his destruction?
From The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg
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
Thus all sin is the overbearing of reason or the sophisticating of reason by passion.
From Expositions of Holy Scripture by Alexander Maclaren
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.
