Complicate vs Simplify - What's the difference?
complicate | simplify |
To fold or twist together; to combine intricately; to make complex; to combine or associate so as to make intricate or difficult.
to expose involvement in a convoluted matter.
(obsolete) Intertwined.
Complex, complicated.
* 1745 , Edward Young, Night-Thoughts , I:
To make simpler, either by reducing in complexity, reducing to component parts, or making easier to understand.
To become simpler.
* 2006 , Karen Oslund, “Reading Backwards: Language Politics and Cultural Identity in Nineteenth-Century Scandinavia”, in David L. Hoyt and Karen Oslund (editors), The Study of Language and the Politics of Community in Global Context , Lexington Books, ISBN 978-0-7391-0955-7, page 126:
In lang=en terms the difference between complicate and simplify
is that complicate is to expose involvement in a convoluted matter while simplify is to make simpler, either by reducing in complexity, reducing to component parts, or making easier to understand.As verbs the difference between complicate and simplify
is that complicate is to fold or twist together; to combine intricately; to make complex; to combine or associate so as to make intricate or difficult while simplify is to make simpler, either by reducing in complexity, reducing to component parts, or making easier to understand.As an adjective complicate
is (obsolete) intertwined.complicate
English
Verb
(complicat)- Don't complicate yourself in issues that are beyond the scope of your education.
- John has been complicated in the affair by new tapes that surfaced.
- The DA has made every effort to complicate me in the scandal.
Synonyms
* (expose involvement in a convoluted matter) intricate, entangle, embroil, mix up (in something), mireSee also
* complexAdjective
(en adjective)- How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, / How complicate , how wonderful, is Man!
External links
* * ----simplify
English
Verb
(en-verb)- Thus, throughout the nineteenth century, linguists generally held that more grammatically complex languages were older and that languages tended to simplify over time—the four grammatical cases of German as contrasted with the seven of Latin, for example.