All 4 Uses of
elaborate
in
Moby Dick
- On this hint, attempts have been made to construct elaborate migratory charts of the sperm whale.†
Chpt 43-45 *
- Throughout the Pacific, and also in Nantucket, and New Bedford, and Sag Harbor, you will come across lively sketches of whales and whaling-scenes, graven by the fishermen themselves on Sperm Whale-teeth, or ladies' busks wrought out of the Right Whale-bone, and other like skrimshander articles, as the whalemen call the numerous little ingenious contrivances they elaborately carve out of the rough material, in their hours of ocean leisure.†
Chpt 55-57 *
- An ancient Hawaiian war-club or spear-paddle, in its full multiplicity and elaboration of carving, is as great a trophy of human perseverance as a Latin lexicon.†
Chpt 55-57
- And Lacepede, the French naturalist, in his elaborate history of whales, in the very beginning of his work (page 3), sets down the Right Whale at one hundred metres, three hundred and twenty-eight feet.†
Chpt 103-105
Definitions:
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(elaborate as in: elaborate on your plan) add details or explain in detail
-
(elaborate as in: an elaborate design) having details and complexity -- sometimes fancy or ornateeditor's notes: Depending upon it's context, this sense of elaborate can additionally imply that details make something either:
- more special than others of its kind in a good way
- more complicated than necessary in a bad way