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Elaborate   /ɪlˈæbrət/  /ɪlˈæbərˌeɪt/   Listen
Elaborate

verb
(past & past part. elaborated; pres. part. elaborating)
1.
Add details, as to an account or idea; clarify the meaning of and discourse in a learned way, usually in writing.  Synonyms: dilate, enlarge, expand, expatiate, exposit, expound, flesh out, lucubrate.
2.
Produce from basic elements or sources; change into a more developed product.
3.
Make more complex, intricate, or richer.  Synonyms: complicate, rarify, refine.
4.
Work out in detail.  Synonym: work out.



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"Elaborate" Quotes from Famous Books



... satire," was acted in 1600, and, as a play, is even more lengthy, elaborate, and impossible than "Every Man Out of His Humour." Here personal satire seems to have absorbed everything, and while much of the caricature is admirable, especially in the detail of witty and trenchantly satirical ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson

... most fundamental of our national ideals,—the ideal of popular government. And not only that, but they were studying popular government in its simplest form, uncomplicated by the innumerable details and the elaborate organizations ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley

... an articled pupil, he knew quite enough about railway engineering to be perfectly well aware that the elaborate measurements which Butler had instructed him to take were absolutely unnecessary, the accurate determination of the width at the top—where a bridge would eventually have to be thrown across—being all that was really ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood

... elaborate meekness proper to his supposed low station he answered, "You leave me no choice, my lord. To resist your will would be suicide, and that is ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey

... confusedly; "I know him very well indeed," and then she was choked to silence by Von Ibn, who turned and gave her a carefully cold look of complete unrecognition. It was too elaborate to be genuine, but it made her feel sick all over; for where other women had brains or souls, Rosina had a heart, and again a heart, and yet once more a heart. And that heart was not only the mainspring of her physical life, but it was also the source of all her ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner

... year.' The priests would reply: 'Oh, you are honourably mistaken; they are in truth very much larger.' 'The colour is not so white this year as it was last year; and the rice-flour is not finely ground.' For all these imaginary faults of the mochi the priests would offer elaborate ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn

... started for the door with a very convincing and elaborate display of indomitable energy. He planted his left foot firmly on the side of the coal pile—and found that his left leg had disappeared in the coal in a highly astonishing ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin

... you. Her originality frequently leads her beyond conventionality; for instance, the other day she took it into her head to dine out of doors. If she wanted to picnic al fresco, why did she not choose some pretty place in the park or in the woods? But no, she had the usual elaborate dinner served directly outside the chateau, and on the gravel walk. The servants, powdered and in short breeches as usual, served us in their customary solemnity; but they must have wondered why we preferred to sit on the gravel, with a draught ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone

... is a reference to those strutting, finely-dressed portraits of the artist which stand beside the entablatures bearing his name, that of his birthplace, the date, &c., in four out of the five most elaborate pictures which Duerer painted. But I would like to suggest that probably this apparent resemblance to his royal patron is not thus altogether well accounted for. May there not have been something of Homer's invocation of his Muse, or of that sincerity which makes Dante ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... docile as a child, quite stupefied, she fell asleep in a nightmare-like torpor, with big, silent tears still flowing from her closed eyes. Elise Rouquet, who had a whole seat to herself, was also getting ready to lie down, but first of all she made quite an elaborate toilet, tying the black wrap which had served to hide her sore about her head, and then again peering into her glass to see if this headgear became her, now that the swelling of her lip had subsided. And again did Pierre feel astonished at ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. vi. (1837), p. 621. History of the Gurha Mundala Rajas, by Captain W. H. Sleeman. [An elaborate history of the Gond dynasty of Garha Mandla, 'which is believed to be founded principally on the chronicles of the Bajpai family, who were the hereditary prime ministers of the Gond princes.' (Central ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... conventionalities didn't exist, and I might tell him that he was a model. Then your youngest playfully spilt a plate of soup on my dress (don't be worried—'twas only a common muslin, and 'twill wash). Of course I had to change it, and as I retired the happy thought struck me that I'd make so elaborate a toilet that I wouldn't finish in time to join the other ladies for the usual evening walk; consequence, I would have a chance to monopolize a gentleman for half an hour or more—a chance which, no thanks to the gentlemen who don't come to Hillcrest, no lady here ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton

... and said something brilliant, or tried to, which did just as well, for laughter is ready when hearts are light. There was no display of gifts, for they were already in the little house, nor was there an elaborate breakfast, but a plentiful lunch of cake and fruit, dressed with flowers. Mr. Laurence and Aunt March shrugged and smiled at one another when water, lemonade, and coffee were found to be to only sorts of nectar which the three Hebes carried ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... can be no doubt that he knew the truth (I speak as of realities), —knew what he intended to represent by so full and elaborate a delineation of a scene. And it is the author's meaning and intention that I wish to ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.02.23 • Various

... community leaders and monitor civil rights cases involving naval personnel, but his response neither discussed new ways to increase job opportunities for Negroes nor mentioned making equal opportunity performance a part of the military efficiency rating system.[22-22] His elaborate provisions for monitoring and reporting notwithstanding, ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... which came from the Leigh Court Collection, under Bellini's name, has much of the depth, richness, and glow which characterises the Beaumont picture, although the latter is naturally more attractive, owing to the wonderful landscape and the more elaborate chiaroscuro. The figures are Bellinesque, yet with that added touch of delicacy and refinement which Giorgione always knows how to impart. The richness of colouring, the depth of tone, the glamour of the whole is far superior ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook

... of the law bearing upon the question. It was also free from ambiguity, and left little room for doubt. These opinions were strengthened by that of Justice Sherwood, who, at the request of the Executive, also prepared an elaborate paper on the subject, in which he expressed precisely similar views to those enunciated by the Attorney-General. The question was then submitted to the Crown officers whether the Lieutenant-Governor could legally remove Judge Willis from office ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... deft fingers disrobed the moody lady, loosened the elaborate structure of hair, brushed it out, and all the while she sat frowning angrily ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming

... there is a direct way from M to Y by the bridge e. Now, what we have to do is to count all the routes that will lead from M to Y, passing over all the bridges, a, b, c, d, and e once and once only. With the simple diagram under the eye it is quite easy, without any elaborate rule, to count these routes methodically. Thus, starting from a, b, we find there are only two ways of completing the route; with a, c, there are only two routes; with a, d, only two routes; and so on. It will be found that there are sixteen such routes in all, ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... taking off her bonnet and the settling her lace as elaborate an operation as she could, and Amy flitted about as if she did not by any means know what she was doing. A springy, running step was heard on the stairs and in the passage, and Mary, though she could ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... side. The sense of artistic fitness is wounded by incongruities of architectural style, of ideas which meet but do not marry. The brazen altar, in the Miraculous Chapel was well enough at the Paris Exhibition of 1889, where it could be admired as a piece of elaborate brass work, but at Roc-Amadour it is a direct challenge to the spirit of the spot. Then again, late Gothic architecture has been grafted upon the early Romanesque. Those who restored the building after ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... swift crowding hours of pleasure, and then you send them back—to settle down in their native States, and obey the orders of the Resident. Do you think they will be content? Do you think they will have their heart in their work, in their humdrum life, in their elaborate ceremonies? Oh, there are instances enough to convince if only people would listen. There's a youth now in the South, the heir of an Indian throne—he has six weeks' holiday. How does he use it, do you think? He travels hard to England, spends a week there, ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason

... great differences of color, form and tissue; these are useful for specific and sectional distinctions, while the gradual change from the primitive conditions of the Cembrae to the elaborate form, structure and mode of dissemination of some serotinous species are obvious evidence of an evolution among the species of remarkable taxonomic range. A form new among Coniferae appears, the oblique cone, and a new condition, the serotinous cone, both appearing at first ...
— The Genus Pinus • George Russell Shaw

... among the rice- plantations, and, since the publication of some of the animal-myths in the newspapers, I have received a version of it from a planter in southwest Georgia; but it seems to me to be an intruder among the genuine myth-stories of the negroes. It is a trifle too elaborate. Nevertheless, it is told upon the plantations with great gusto, and there are several versions ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris

... of "the new West" came to her by way of the pretentious Hotel Alma, which stood opposite the station at Sulphur, and to which she was led by a colored porter of most elaborate and kindly manners. ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland

... provide him with a comfortable well-ordered home, creditable to himself and his profession. It is ten to one that he lives untidily; that every thing about him is in confusion, that the amenities of domestic life are absent from his establishment; that he is altogether in a state of elaborate and costly disorder, such as we are bound to say is the characteristic of no other kind of professional life. He seldom has a settled home—a fixed position. He appears to be constantly on the move. He seldom lives, for any length of time, in the same place; and is rarely at home ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... the elaborate way in which she took her seat beside him and hid the piece of paper in her hand that she had some new whim in fermentation—something to ask him that she knew ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard

... and elaborate speech, which was also given them in writing, they were not long considering of, but soon returned with the following message; and shewed him that they were neither to be shaken by persuasion, nor intimidated by threats, from their firm purpose. "We have already acquainted you, that we would not ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt

... and must have taken his part in it. On the other hand, Meletius, who held the see of Antioch in the latter part of the fourth century, was one of the principal figures in the Arian controversy and, as such, far too intimately involved in the questions of his own day to think of writing an elaborate work on a subject so comparatively dead as the docetism of Marcion. Moreover, there is no instance in any Greek writer, so far as I have observed, of a confusion between the names Melito and Meletius. Again it is suggested ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... and most elaborate production from his pen is the pamphlet on the "Rights of the Colonies." It affords a fair specimen of his impetuous and inaccurate rhetoric, his rapid and eager manner of accumulating facts, arguments, and daring assertions, and the "glowing earnestness ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath

... series of stories, rather than Sterne's subtle amalgam of pathos, gentle irony, and frank buffoonery; and the stories themselves are for the most part either insipid or obscene. There is perhaps one exception. The longest and the most elaborate of them, that which Schiller translated, is more like one of the modern French novels of a certain kind, than any other production of the eighteenth century. The adventure of Madame de Pommeraye and the Marquis d'Arcis is ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... though she was out of her mind the nun could not help feeling that she was acting a part, even in her delirium, and in spite of the tears that forced themselves through her hands and ran down, wetting the lace and spotting the scarlet ribbons of her elaborate nightdress. Sister Giovanna put aside the thought as a possibly unjust judgment, and ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford

... one of the most elaborate, tasteful, and elegant in all France; there the finest specimens of Italian sculpture, painting, and woodwork were to be seen. The king, upon making her a duchess, presented her with the beautiful chateau of Chenonceaux, which was so ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme

... seemed to be the immolation of myself in the long neglected house work. A vigorous sweeping of my room, the preparation of an elaborate luncheon salad, and the total rearrangement of the parlor furniture might help to get rid of that heart-beating expectation—soothing, and bulwarking me around with domesticity. But the excitement of the city kept invading my retreat, as if it were so full of that great matter ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain

... cut away, so that, instead of being closed in front by a perpendicular slab of marble or by tiles, it is covered on the top by a horizontal slab. Such a grave is called an arcosolium, and its somewhat elaborate construction leads to the conclusion that it was rarely used in the earliest period of the catacombs[E]. The arcosolia are usually wide enough for more than one body; and it would seem, from inscriptions that have been found upon their covering-slabs, that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... principles of Christianity are to be found in the writings of the apostles. Before we proceed further, we would remark here that it seems extremely startling to say that He who came to this world expressly to preach the Gospel, should, in the most elaborate of all His discourses, omit to do so: it is indeed something more than startling, it is absolutely revolting to suppose that the letters of those who spoke of Christ, should contain a more perfectly-developed, a freer and fuller Christianity ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... need a very elaborate one. Isn't there a false-face in the house with whiskers or a ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene

... a jealous mistress.—If we trifle with her; if we fall in love with pretentious imitations and elaborate ornamentations which have no beauty in them, but are simply gotten up to sell; then the true and real beauty will never again suffer us to see her face. She will leave us to our idols: and our power to appreciate and admire true beauty will ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde

... to tactical, and sometimes to strategical, dispositions. To try to obtain that information an army pours out much blood and treasure; to guard that information an army will consume a full third of its energies in an elaborate system of mystification. A modern army must either banish the war correspondent altogether or subject him to such restrictions of Censorship as to veto honest, accurate, and prompt criticism or ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox

... the First Epistle to the Corinthians, (t. 10,) in forty-four homilies, was likewise the fruit of his zeal at Antioch, and is one of the most elaborate and finished of his works. The interpreter seems animated with the spirit of the great apostle whose sacred oracle he expounds, so admirably does he penetrate the pious energy of the least tittle. If St. Paul uses the words My God, he observes, that ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... There they parted, Ned and Marjorie turning to the west, while Howard and Allie kept straight on towards the north, and finally stopped at a small brick house, a low, one-story affair, yet much more elaborate than the average dwelling of the town, where the architecture was largely of the log-house species, though often covered with a layer of boards to disguise the primitive nature ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray

... and talked as best they could to Yvonne, who, very trim in her black dress and blue apron, perched on the edge of her chair with her feet in tiny pumps pressed tightly together, and glanced now and then at the elaborate stripes on the top ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos

... letters arrived, he devoured them with tremulous eagerness, and sat up half the night writing an elaborate answer, while Nettie's letters lay ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland

... they may know you, and that they may never have lost sight of you. Your mother was a working-girl, you think? That may be. But your father? Do you know what interests your existence may threaten? Do you know what elaborate edifice of falsehood and infamy your sudden appearance ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau

... and grasp wider possibilities. But the same speaker went on to point out that the English worker has far more real initiative and imagination than the German, and that in our own country we have not even to make elaborate plans for developing these qualities, but rather to release them in our administrators so far as to prevent actually checking them in the children ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various

... a drawing-room ornament. It is an elaborate and careful summary of all that one of our most learned antiquaries, after years of pleasant labour on a very pleasant subject, has been able to learn as to the condition of women from the earliest times. It is beautifully illustrated, both in colours—mainly ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton

... difficulty into remote views of things, and are not able to accompany them with so sensible an impression, as we do those, which are more easy and natural. Shall we, then, establish it for a general maxim, that no refined or elaborate reasoning is ever to be received? Consider well the consequences of such a principle. By this means you cut off entirely all science and philosophy: You proceed upon one singular quality of the imagination, and by a parity of reason must embrace all of them: And you expressly contradict yourself; ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume

... poems and lyrics contained in the two previous editions, some hundred or more pages of the later productions of the author, in the sprightly vein, and marked by the brilliant fancy and felicitous diction for which the former were noteworthy. His longest and most elaborate poem, Urania, is perhaps the best specimen of his powers. Its general tone is playful and humorous; but there are passages of great tenderness and pathos. Witness the following, from a description of the city churchgoers. The whole compass of our ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... from that observed at dinners. The occasion is a bit more informal and the menu not so elaborate. The etiquette of ball suppers is treated in the chapter on The Dance, and suppers after the play, at restaurants and clubs, being favorite bachelor entertainments, will be explained in that part of this book reserved for the ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain

... the palm for the cooking of the more elaborate meals of the day, but surely no breakfast can touch that served in a well-ordered Scottish household. The smoothly boiled porridge, with its accompaniment of thick yellow cream; the new-laid eggs; the grilled ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... 'concrete,' in that sense in which it is applied to the objective and universal 'genus.' Dr. Abbot's appropriation of Hegel's peculiar terminology comes ill indeed from one who talks," etc. "This I say not to defend Hegel, for whose elaborate theory of universals I hold in no wise a brief, but simply in the cause of literary property-rights. When we plough with another man's heifer, however unconscious we are of our appropriation, however sincerely we seem to remember that we alone raised ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot

... is a good deal of rather vague talk about this new college—of the quadrangle which is to solve all dormitory and recitation problems, and which is to shine with beauty. But at present the meadow is sacred to athletics, and the elaborate new boat house, completed last spring, seems to make the quadrangle less of a probability ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis

... distinguished themselves will best appear from the private letter of her brave commander to his brother, written only the day after the action; a circumstance which cannot but give such a communication a value far superior to a more elaborate composition. The log also of his ship, written at the time by the master, to which we have had access, completely accords with the facts so clearly stated ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross

... fifteen at the most, was naturally very bashful. When she found herself in this vast hall, between a double row of persons of importance, whose fixed gaze never left her, she forgot all the bows, all the elaborate courtesies,—in fine, all the difficult procedure of a formal presentation, that her sister-in-law and dancing-masters had been making her rehearse ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... was up to see them off, and never had her cap been more elaborate, or her hair been ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... not, in reality, more surprised at this outbreak than he had been when his "fore-quarter of bloody beef" had been accepted unchallenged, but he professed to be so; and in his elaborate astonishment allowed Janet's remarks about a slight mistake she had made, and about the impropriety of "looking a gift horse in the mouth" ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson

... in then, glanced swiftly from one to the other, said something unimportant, rolled a cigarette with elaborate care, and observed that Duke would find it hot, riding all the way to Shoshone, and that he'd be darned if he'd go that far for any girl. He sat down and disposed himself comfortably, got up, muttered something about forgetting to turn Coaley ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower

... from this pretension soon became apparent. As early as December, 1782, a committee of Congress made an elaborate report on the refusal of Rhode Island, one of the States, to confer certain powers on Congress with regard to revenue and commerce. In April, 1783, an address of Congress to the States was put forth, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... replies will be in various keys. One result of simplification is obvious. There would be so much more money in the manager's pocket after he had paid the expenses of production. If his outlay were smaller, the sum that he expended in the production of one play of Shakespeare on the current over-elaborate scale would cover the production of two or three pieces mounted with simplicity and with a strict adherence to the requirements of the text. In such an event, the manager would be satisfied with a shorter ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee

... matine—at subscription prices. There were, therefore, in all, seventy-two performances, at which twenty-four different operas were brought forward, as shown in the table which is to follow. There was a less elaborate organization than in the preceding season, but the average merit of the performances was higher, there being no ill-equipped German contingent to spoil the record. There were, however, quite as many German performances without the special singers and ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... insects invaded the stillness of the lonely farms which, at long distances, gave picturesque evidence of the human toil expended on the careful, rather melancholy charm of that northern landscape. The Villa Miraflores—an elaborate reproduction of the celebrated Villa Madama near Rome—stood on a wooded hill rising out of a river, facing the rocky sea-coast. Built by the Archduke Charles of Alberia for his morganatic wife, Henriette Duboc, and pulled down since for the erection of a convent, it ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... aeolian-harp, the other a hurricane. I never attempted to play these studies in their revised form; I content myself with the first sketches published as an opus 1. There the nucleus of each etude may be seen. Later Liszt expanded the croquis into elaborate frescoes. And yet they say that he ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... of parallel a la Plutarch between Thackeray and Dickens. We do not intend to make out which is the greater, for they may be equally great, though utterly unlike, but merely to touch on a few striking points. Thackeray, in his more elaborate works, always paints character, and Dickens single peculiarities. Thackeray's personages are all men, those of Dickens personified oddities. The one is an artist, the other a caricaturist; the one pathetic, the other sentimental. Nothing ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... elaborate but by no means misleading explanation to Willie, Bob sent off to a Boston jeweler a registered package and while impatiently awaiting its return set to work with redoubled zest at ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett

... said with elaborate indifference, "ye aren't havin' to see anybody ye don't want to. If it's somebody intrudin' himself on ye, just say the word and I'll fire him; higher than Guilderoy's ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter

... though the eyes looked bloodshot. Indeed, there was a purple tint about the eyelids and lips, a dried-up appearance, and a heated oppressed air, as if the faculties were deadened and burnt up, though her hand was cold and trembling. Her hair, still in its elaborate arrangement, hung loose, untidy, untouched; her collar and sleeves were soiled and tumbled; her dress, with its inconvenient machinery of inflation, looked wretched from its incongruity, and the stains on the huge hanging ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... an important factor in the development of the art. Later composers elaborated his idea by extending the finale to more than one movement, and by varying the key-colour. Finally, but not until after many years, it was introduced into opera seria, when it gave birth to the idea of elaborate trios and quartets, which were afterwards to play so important a part in its development. Logroscino's reputation was chiefly local, but the works of Pergolesi (1710-1736) and Jomelli (1714-1774) made the Neapolitan school famous throughout Europe. Both these composers are now best known by their ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... traditions, in the designs with which he embellishes certain specimens of the handiwork, with which he oft vexes the public eye. (I must really, though, pay my tribute of admiration for the skilled workmanship many of these specimens disclose.) It is common for him, when at work upon the elaborate carving in wood that he practises, to engrave some hideous human figure, intended, obviously, to represent an idol. Does it not excite wonder with us that such refinements upon hideousness and repulsiveness could ever have provoked the worship or adoration ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie

... of any very severe treatment. In fact, the notices made of them were very brief, and, but for the elaborate way in which they were described in the "Baltimore Sun," by their owners, their narratives would hardly be considered of sufficient interest to record. The heavy rewards, beautiful descriptions, and elegant illustrations in the "Sun," were very ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... the Present Practice of the most Eminent Engineers and Marine Engine Builders in the United States. Illustrated by 30 large and elaborate plates. 4to. $5.00 ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose

... the bishop, dean, and chapter? Or perhaps, if I achieve a great success, obtain a commission to put up an elaborate tombstone over a prebendary's widow, a dead lady with a Grecian nose, a bandeau, and an intricate lace veil; lying of course on a marble sofa from among the legs of which death will be creeping out and poking at his victim with ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... case be a sinner—a charity that was made to cover a multitude of sinners. One large religious assembly declared that it could not "exclude slaveholders from the table of the Lord;" it would rather "sympathize with and succor them in their embarrassments." An elaborate report was adopted at another large convocation, in which it was suggested that the convert should be admitted into the church while still a slaveholder, an oppressive ruler and a proud Brahmin, in the hope that under proper ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 10, October, 1889 • Various

... again, with a swift transition of his terrors, the very silence of the place appeared a source of peril, and a thing to strike and freeze the passer-by; and he would step more boldly, and bustle aloud among the contents of the shop, and imitate, with elaborate bravado, the movements of a busy man at ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith

... slave, who had fallen asleep again under the table, a kick with his bare foot, and while Anubis lighted his master to his sleeping-room, and helped him in his long and elaborate ablutions, Horapollo never ceased muttering broken sentences and curses, or ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... those which mingle the atmospheric elements, hourly adjusting them to man's nicest needs. And we should count it among the best of the progressive plans of our country, if to the new Industrial College under subscription at Worcester were to be added an elaborate culinary department, with the most accomplished professor that could be obtained. Perhaps, as M. Soyer was philanthropic enough to go to the Crimea, and teach the English to make hospital soup, he would even come here and give our nation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various

... actively at perceiving the procession which approached from the swamp. Two or three ran back to the largest shelter and presently a big-bodied, middle-aged man strode out, his mien stern and dignified, his rank denoted by the elaborate fringed tunic of buckskin and the head-dress of heron plumes. He shouted something in a sonorous voice. The hunting party hastened forward, dragging the two English lads by the elbows and flinging them down at the feet of the chief. ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... there were various species of sack: "Your best sacke are of Seres in Spaine, your smaller of Galicia and Portugall: your strong sackes are of the islands of the Canaries and of Malligo, and your Muscadine and Malmseys are of many parts of Italy, Greece, and some speciall islands." [But see an elaborate note on sack (vin sec) in Dyce's "Shakespeare ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... many different costumes. The whole outfit would have been adequate and appropriate for parades on the Atlantic City boardwalk or a saunter down Peacock Alley of a great hotel, but it was entirely too elaborate for a Lancaster ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers

... expressed wish was that all the usual forms should be disregarded in the event of his death, except the simplest service and the presence of flowers. "If any one thinks enough of me," he said, "to bring me flowers, let them; but have no elaborate mourning, and bury me close to the earth, near the pines, and facing the sea." The legend he left for his grave-stone was: "I meant well, tried a little, failed much." But this will not be the verdict of those who came under the influence of his ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various

... him. He thinks, he feels, he lives, all in a whole. Each person is the tribe in little. This may make everyone an astoundingly complex character; but it makes strong individuality impossible in savagery, since everyone accepts the same elaborate unanalysed whole of tribal existence. That existence, indeed, would find in the assertion of private individuality a serious danger; and tribal organization guards against this so efficiently that it is doubtless impossible, so long as there is no interruption from outside. ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie

... charm of Beauties powerful glance. Or Nature faild in mee, and left some part Not proof enough such Object to sustain, Or from my side subducting, took perhaps More then enough; at least on her bestow'd Too much of Ornament, in outward shew Elaborate, of inward less exact. For well I understand in the prime end 540 Of Nature her th' inferiour, in the mind And inward Faculties, which most excell, In outward also her resembling less His Image who made both, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... the organism with which they have to deal is going through the most critical period of its existence. At the very time that children are rapidly undergoing the process of physical development, there is superadded the acquirement of elaborate mental knowledge, and when bone and muscle and sinew are in the active processes of transformation and growth, then it is that the intellectual faculties are spurred on at a killing pace. The child leaves school in the afternoon with a load of home lessons to be ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)

... great, handsome, dreary room sat Giant Despair. The December day was damp and cheerless, and the coal fire in the ugly old-fashioned grate beneath the elaborate marble mantel burned in a grudging, spiritless way. Above the uncurtained windows, with their shutters thrown wide upon a view of moist, bare garden, the heavy gilt cornices seemed to frown. Giant Despair was ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard

... in all these animal types nervous systems differentiated on distinctly different patterns, fully formed organs of circulation, digestion, excretion, and generation, complexly constructed eyes and other sense organs; in fact, all the most elaborate and complete animal structures built up, and not only once, for in the fishes and mollusca we have (as described in the third chapter of this work) the coincidence of the independently developed organs of sense attaining a nearly similar complexity in two quite distinct forms. ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart

... Procopius, l. iii. c. 12. The soul of a hero is deeply impressed on the letter; nor can we confound such genuine and original acts with the elaborate and often empty speeches of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... this change of character, the events, the temptations, the trials under which Charles became an altered man, have been very slightly studied, and, indeed, have been very obscurely known. Even Mr. Ewald, the author of the most elaborate biography of the Prince, {13} neglected some important French printed sources, while manuscript documents, here for the first time published, were not at his command. The present essay is itself unavoidably incomplete, for of family papers bearing on the subject many have perished under the ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang

... valuable notes in which the author elucidated the "many legal topics contained in the work, enabling the non-professional reader to understand more easily the somewhat complex and elaborate plot ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... the sides of the roads and ditches, are ruthlessly cut down. The edges of all the fields are neatly trimmed and cut. Useless trees and clumps of jungle are cut down; and in fact the Zeraats round a factory shew a perfect picture of orderly thrift, careful management, and neat, scientific, and elaborate farming. ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... his apartments at Kensington Palace. The collection consisted of more than fifty thousand volumes, twelve thousand of which were theological. It included a very considerable number of early Hebrew and other rare manuscripts, and about one thousand editions of the Bible. An elaborate catalogue of a portion of it, entitled Bibliotheca Sussexiana, was compiled by Dr. T.J. Pettigrew, the Duke's librarian, in two volumes, the first of which was printed in 1827, and ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher

... Hill of New York, has recently published a pamphlet of elaborate statistics, his object being to prove that Great Britain has protected not only her commerce, but her shipbuilding, by subsidies. In one respect he is right. By liberal payment for the carriage of her mails she has indirectly fostered commerce in maintaining ...
— Free Ships: The Restoration of the American Carrying Trade • John Codman

... mostly in Holland we are at a loss to say; his many elaborate pieces, both practical, argumentative and historical, witness that he was not idle; which were either mostly wrote there, or published from thence; and particularly those concerning the indulgences-paying, &c. sent for the support and strengthening of his persecuted brethren in ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... Investigation into the Internal Stresses Occurring in Cast Iron and Steel.—By General NICHOLAS KALAKOUTZKY.—First installment of an elaborate paper, giving theoretical and experimental examination of this ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various

... as they had occurred, were then narrated by Cicero in his Third Oration, delivered in the forum. On the nones (5th) of December the Senate was again summoned to determine upon the fate of the conspirators. Caesar, in an elaborate speech, proposed that they should be kept in confinement in the different towns of Italy, but Cato and Cicero strongly advocated that they should be instantly put to death. Their views were adopted by a ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence

... in all, this intimacy was perhaps more harmful than helpful to Delsarte. Yet I have been told that Raymond Brucker urged the innovator to elaborate his discovery, and often reproached him with his negligence in pecuniary matters. It was he who said: "Francois Delsarte's system is an orthopedic machine to ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... few years later, it solved "all problems in the earth and out of it." To that solution Shelley seemed to Browning to be on the way, and his incomplete grasp of it appealed to him more powerfully than did the elaborate dogmatisms professedly based upon it. Shelley had mistaken "Churchdom" for Christianity; but he was on the way, Browning was convinced, to become a Christian himself. "I shall say what I think,—had Shelley lived he would have finally ranged himself ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... And yet they prided themselves upon their barbaric rusticity, glorying in a native cunning bred of their wild life and sharpened in the struggle for existence. What, after all, is 'The Jumping Frog' but the elaborate narrative, in native vernacular, of a shrewd practical joke? As Mark Twain first heard it, this story was a solemn recital of an interesting incident in the life of Angel's Camp. It was Mark Twain who "created" the story: he endowed ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... the same notion. Some of the people whom I discovered eat men, as was evidenced by the brutality of their countenances. They say that there are great mines of copper in the country, of which they make hatchets[411-1] and other elaborate articles both cast and soldered; they also make of it forges, with all the apparatus of the goldsmith, and crucibles. The inhabitants go clothed; and in that province I saw some large sheets of cotton very elaborately and cleverly worked, and others very ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... no less than space, fares badly. A common example is that of the man who tries by making an elaborate will to control his money long after his death. "It had been the purpose of the first William James," writes his great-grandson Henry James, [Footnote: The Letters of William James, Vol. I, p. 6.] "to provide that his children (several of whom were under age when he died) should qualify ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... certainly touched the emotions and enhanced the pleasure of all travellers in the last three generations whose minds are accessible to poetic suggestion; and if at the present day their style be thought too elaborate and the allusions commonplace, it cannot be denied that the fine art of English composition would be poorer without them. The stanzas in Childe Harold on Waterloo are full of the energy which takes hold of and poetically elevates the incidents of war—the distant cannon, the ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... the widely different habits of life in the thirteen colonies. It came also from the association of the people of the different sections when as soldiers of their King they were summoned to the various wars. Still another impetus was given to the national idea by the fashion of long, elaborate correspondence. Especially was this true after the Albany convention of 1754, called to discuss Franklin's Plan of Union, had introduced men of like minds, abilities, and purpose, and also the needs of their respective sections, ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

... the office, and as there were no other clerks in the establishment—owing to a root and branch reform carried out in the short reign of Harold Smith—to whom could young Robarts talk, if not to Buggins? "No; I suppose not," said Robarts, as he completed on his blotting-paper an elaborate picture of a Turk seated ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... Italian opera to a collection of mere showpieces of singing, the arias having indeed an excuse in the story, but the action of the drama had been lost entirely, owing to the long stretches of time needed for these elaborate arias and the recalls to which they inevitably gave rise. During these pauses the action ceased entirely, as we see at the present day in many Italian operas still current—as in the "mad scene" from "Lucia," for instance. In that scene where everything ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews

... the breath of the Lord!" The learned and venerable Faber, a voluminous author and distinguished English divine, published in the year 1851 a large octavo entitled "The Many Mansions in the House of the Father," discussing with elaborate detail the question as to the locality of the scenes awaiting souls after death. His grand conclusion the unreasonableness of which will be apparent without comment is as follows: "The saints having first risen with Christ into the highest regions of ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... uncertain point whether these rich articles of plate were made for the occasion out of molten sunbeams, or recovered from the wrecks of Spanish galleons that had lain for ages at the bottom of the sea. The upper end of the table was overshadowed by a canopy, beneath which was placed a chair of elaborate magnificence, which the host himself declined to occupy, and besought his guests to assign it to the worthiest among them. As a suitable homage to his incalculable antiquity and eminent distinction, the post of honor was at first tendered to the Oldest ...
— A Select Party (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the 2nd vol. of his Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, has a very elaborate commentary on this chapter of Ezekiel, in which he satisfactorily makes out the nature of most of the articles mentioned in it, as well as the locality of the places from which they are ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... ask, is possible in "putting up" a heavy dumb-bell? But in the new dumb-bell exercises there is opportunity and necessity for all the accuracy and skill which are found in the most elaborate military drills. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... pleasure in monkeying around, making inventions, that their many devices will be more of a care than a comfort. In their homes a large part of their time will have to be spent keeping their numerous ingenuities in good working order—their elaborate bell-ringing arrangements, their locks and their clocks. In the field of science to be sure, this fertility in invention will lead to a long list of important and beautiful discoveries: telescopes and the calculus, radiographs, ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.

... worked their way, in only four years, into all but four. Different methods are used. The simplest is, of course, discrimination in the use of the railway for shipping. Downright refusal to furnish cars while competitors who accepted Japanese partners got them, is one method. Another more elaborate method is to send but one car when a large number is asked for, and then when it is too late to use cars, send the whole number asked for or even more, and then charge a large sum for demurrage in spite of the fact the mine ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey

... to calculate anxiously the strength of our materials and the force of every thrust and strain to which they may be subjected, and very possibly after all we may find that we have made a mistake somewhere in our elaborate calculations. But if we realise the power of creating from within, we shall find all these calculations correctly made for us; for the same Spirit which is Creator is also that which the Bible calls "the Wonderful Numberer." Construction from without is based upon analysis, and ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward

... Sentimental Tommy fights his own play-actor character. Tito Melema goes down beneath the weight of his accumulated insincerities. Sometimes light shines in the end, sometimes the hero wins only to die. To be sure, these struggles suggest merely a single idea, whereas plots often become very elaborate and contain even sub-plots, counter-plots, and added complications of all sorts. But the basis is the same, and always in some form struggle pervades the drama; always this struggle ranges the subordinate characters for or against ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds

... whole traditional division of rhetoric is transferred to poetry, and at the same time both rhetoric and poetic are limited to the single part which they have in common—diction. The style cultivated by this focus is ornamental and elaborate. If Lydgate or Hawes had believed that rhetoric included more than aureate language, surely the scope of their treatises would have afforded them opportunity to correct this impression. Each of them is endeavoring to present a compendium ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark



Words linked to "Elaborate" :   create, make grow, modify, careful, particularise, clear up, contract, make, detail, develop, specialise, change, sophisticate, work up, elaboration, specialize, refine, in an elaborate way, particularize, fancy, clarify, involve, alter, specify, instance, exemplify, illustrate, elucidate, produce, set forth



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