Verb

(en verb)

To make plain, manifest, or intelligible; to clear of obscurity; to illustrate the meaning of.

*

The boy became volubly friendly and bubbling over with unexpected humour and high spirits. He tried to persuade Cicely to stay away from the ball-room for a fourth dance. Nobody would miss them, he explained .

* {{quote-magazine, date=2012-03

, author=, volume=100, issue=2, page=106 , magazine=(American Scientist) , title= Pixels or Perish , passage=Drawings and pictures are more than mere ornaments in scientific discourse. Blackboard sketches, geological maps, diagrams of molecular structure, astronomical photographs, MRI images, the many varieties of statistical charts and graphs: These pictorial devices are indispensable tools for presenting evidence, for explaining a theory, for telling a story.}}

To give a valid excuse for some past behavior.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-07, author=David Simpson

, volume=188, issue=26, page=36, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Fantasy of navigation , passage=It is tempting to speculate about the incentives or compulsions that might explain why anyone would take to the skies in [the] basket [of a balloon]: perhaps out of a desire to escape the gravity of this world or to get a preview of the next; […].}}

(obsolete) To make flat, smooth out.

(obsolete) To unfold or make visible.

* (John Evelyn) (1620-1706)

The horse-chestnut isready to explain its leaf.

Verb

(subscrib)

(ergative) To sign up to have copies of a publication, such as a newspaper or a magazine, delivered for a period of time.

Would you like to subscribe''' or '''subscribe a friend to our new magazine, Lexicography Illustrated?

To pay for the provision of a service, such as Internet access or a cell phone plan.

To believe or agree with a theory or an idea.

I don’t subscribe to that theory.

To pay money to be a member of an organization.

To contribute or promise to contribute money to a common fund.

1913:' Theodore Roosevelt, ''Autobiography'' — under no circumstances could I ever again be nominated for any public office, as no corporation would '''subscribe''' to a campaign fund if I was on the ticket, and that they would ' subscribe most heavily to beat me;

To promise to give, by writing one's name with the amount.

Each man subscribed ten dollars.

(business, and, finance) To agree to buy shares in a company.

1776:' Adam Smith, ''The Wealth of Nations'' — The capital which had been ' subscribed to this bank, at two different subscriptions, amounted to one hundred and sixty thousand pounds, of which eighty per cent only was paid up.

To sign; to mark with one's signature as a token of consent or attestation.

Parties subscribe''' a covenant or contract; a man '''subscribes a bond.

Officers subscribe''' their official acts, and secretaries and clerks '''subscribe copies or records.

* Milman

All the bishops subscribed the sentence.

(archaic) To write (one’s name) at the bottom of a document; to sign (one's name).

* Sir Thomas More

[They] subscribed their names under them.

(obsolete) To sign away; to yield; to surrender.

(Shakespeare)

(obsolete) To yield; to admit to being inferior or in the wrong.

(obsolete) To declare over one's signature; to publish.

* Shakespeare

I will subscribe him a coward.