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nvolved; perplexed; complicated; difficult to understand, follow, arrange, or adjust; as, intricate machinery, labyrinths, accounts, plots, etc. His style was fit to convey the most intricate business to the understanding with the utmost clearness. Addison. The nature of man is intricate. Burke.

In an intricate manner.

The state or quality of being intricate; intricacy.

To disentangle. [R.] "To disintricate the question." Sir W. Hamilton.

Involved; intricate; not easily followed or traced. The blind mazes of this tangled wood. Milton.

That which guides or directs one in anything of a doubtful or intricate nature; that which gives a hint in the solution of a mystery. The clew, without which it was perilous to enter the vast and intricate maze of countinental politics, was in his hands. Macaulay.

Involving many parts; complicated; intricate. When the actual motions of the heavens are calculated in the best possible way, the process is difficult and complex. Whewell. Complex fraction. See Fraction. -- Complex number (Math.), in the theory of numbers, an expression of the form a + bsq. root-1, when a and b are o…

A state of being complicate or intricate. Mitford.

To fold or twist together; to combine intricately; to make complex; to combine or associate so as to make intricate or difficult. Nor can his complicated sinews fail. Young. Avarice and luxury very often become one complicated principle of action. Addison. When the disease is complicated with other diseases. Arbuthnot.…

The act or process of complicating; the state of being complicated; intricate or confused relation of parts; entaglement; complexity. A complication of diseases. Macaulay. Through and beyond these dark complications of the present, the New England founders looked to the great necessities of future times. Palfrey.…

Hard to penetrate or comprehend; profound; -- opposed to shallow or superficial; intricate; mysterious; not obvious; obscure; as, a deep subject or plot. Speculations high or deep. Milton. A question deep almost as the mystery of life. De Quincey. O Lord, . . . thy thought are very deep. Ps. xcii. 5.…

To free from entanglement; to release from a condition of being intricately and confusedly involved or interlaced; to reduce to orderly arrangement; to straighten out; as, to disentangle a skein of yarn.

interweave in such a manner as not to be easily separated; to make tangled, confused, and intricate; as, to entangle yarn or the hair.

State of being entangled; intricate and confused involution; that which entangles; intricacy; perplexity.

ver to which the wire is soldered, being arranged in designs frequently of a delicate and intricate arabesque pattern.

Pertaining to Gordius, king of Phrygia, or to a knot tied by him; hence, intricate; complicated; inextricable. Gordian knot, an intricate knot tied by Gordius in the thong which connected the pole of the chariot with the yoke. An oracle having declared that he who should untie it should be master of Asia, Alexander the…

Rough; rugged; bristling. [Archaic] Horrid with fern, and intricate with thorn. Dryden.

An intricate, complicated plot, as of a drama or work of fiction.

Intricate; entangled; complicated; complex. The fable of every poem is . . . simple or implex. it is called simple when there is no change of fortune in it; implex, when the fortune of the chief actor changes from bad to good, or from good to bad. Addison.

Incapable of being extricated, untied, or disentangled; hopelessly intricate, confused, or obscure; as, an inextricable knot or difficulty; inextricable confusion. Lost in the wild, inextricable maze. Blackmore.