All 38 Uses of
elaborate
in
Of Human Bondage
- All these he had taken and, with the help of the gilt rout chairs, light and easy to move, had made an elaborate cave in which he could hide himself from the Red Indians who were lurking behind the curtains.
Chpt 1-2 (definition 1)elaborate = having details and complexity
- Mrs. Carey looked at Philip surreptitiously now and then, but the Vicar elaborately ignored him.†
Chpt 7-8 (definition 1)
- She coughed elaborately at the door so that Philip should have time to compose himself, she felt that he would be humiliated if she came upon him in the midst of his tears, then she rattled the door handle.
Chpt 9-10 (definition 2) *elaborately = in an exaggerated manner
- But Mr. Perkins devised an elaborate scheme by which he might obtain sufficient space to make the school double its present size.†
Chpt 15-16 (definition 3)
- Philip looked upon him with puzzled surprise; for he was very unlike his idea of the revolutionary: he spoke in a low voice and was extraordinarily polite; he never sat down till he was asked to; and when on rare occasions he met Philip in the street took off his hat with an elaborate gesture; he never laughed, he never even smiled.†
Chpt 25-26 (definition 3)
- He took the coin and, without anything more than the elaborate bow with which he always took his leave, went out.†
Chpt 25-26 (definition 3)
- He received them with elaborate courtesy and insisted on their sitting in the only two comfortable chairs in the room.†
Chpt 27-28 (definition 3)
- With smiling ease, apologetically, Weeks tore to pieces all that Hayward had said; with elaborate civility he displayed the superficiality of his attainments.†
Chpt 27-28 (definition 3)
- The gentle oath, the violent adjective, which are typical of our language and which he had cultivated before as a sign of manliness, he now elaborately eschewed.†
Chpt 27-28 (definition 1)
- Her hair was elaborately dressed, with a neat curl in the middle of the forehead: it was very black, shiny and hard, and it looked as though it could never be in the least disarranged.†
Chpt 31-32 (definition 1)
- They elaborated.†
Chpt 41-42 (definition 3) *
- The others were elaborately polite to him, and during the soup they talked of the weather and the political situation.†
Chpt 47-48 (definition 1)
- Each man was his own philosopher, and the elaborate systems which the great men of the past had composed were only valid for the writers.†
Chpt 53-54 (definition 3)
- He made an elaborate plan of study.†
Chpt 53-54 (definition 3)
- She seemed to have a great deal of hair: it was arranged with peculiar elaboration and done over the forehead in what she called an Alexandra fringe.†
Chpt 55-56 (definition 3)
- He had The Star with him and read it elaborately when she brought the tea.†
Chpt 55-56 (definition 1)
- She had taken off her cloak; and he saw that she wore a pale blue dress, cut square at the neck; and her hair was more elaborately arranged than ever.†
Chpt 57-58 (definition 1)
- He went through an elaborate form of stamping his foot and walking about.†
Chpt 69-70 (definition 3)
- Mildred had become great friends with her and had given her an elaborate but mendacious account of the circumstances which had brought her to the pass she was in.†
Chpt 71-72 (definition 3)
- She no longer troubled to do her hair with the old elaboration, but just tied it in a knot; and she left off the vast fringe which she generally wore: the more careless style suited her.†
Chpt 71-72 (definition 3)
- Here and there a well-known actor passed, elaborately unconscious of the attention he excited: sometimes he wore patent leather boots, a coat with an astrakhan collar, and carried a silverknobbed stick; and sometimes, looking as though he had come from a day's shooting, he strolled in knickerbockers, and ulster of Harris tweed, and a tweed hat on the back of his head.†
Chpt 73-74 (definition 1)
- She had a genteel refinement which shuddered at the facts of life, she looked upon the bodily functions as indecent, she had all sorts of euphemisms for common objects, she always chose an elaborate word as more becoming than a simple one: the brutality of these men was like a whip on her thin white shoulders, and she shuddered with voluptuous pain.†
Chpt 77-78 (definition 3)
- Sometimes, knowing that in the dispensary they were worked off their legs and preferred to give the medicines which they had all ready, the good hospital mixtures which had been found by the experience of years to answer their purpose so well, he amused himself by writing an elaborate prescription.†
Chpt 81-82 (definition 3)
- He had formed a style for himself by a close imitation of Sir Thomas Browne; he used elaborate sentences, carefully balanced, and obsolete, resplendent words: it gave his writing an appearance of individuality.†
Chpt 83-84 (definition 3)
- The only other piece of furniture was a bargueno, elaborately ornamented with gilt iron-work, on a stand of ecclesiastical design roughly but very finely carved.†
Chpt 87-88 (definition 1)
- An uneasy feeling came to Philip that possibly the whole story was an elaborate imposture, not told with any base motive, but merely from a wish to impress, startle, and amaze.†
Chpt 87-88 (definition 3)
- She had taken her hair out of the curling pins and now wore an elaborate fringe.†
Chpt 87-88 (definition 3)
- She was the buyer in the "Petticoats,' and when Philip entered was engaged in conversation with the buyer in the "Gentlemen's Hosiery;' Miss Bennett was a woman of massive proportions, with a very large red face heavily powdered and a bust of imposing dimensions; her flaxen hair was arranged with elaboration.†
Chpt 103-104 (definition 3)
- As the weaver elaborated his pattern for no end but the pleasure of his aesthetic sense, so might a man live his life, or if one was forced to believe that his actions were outside his choosing, so might a man look at his life, that it made a pattern.†
Chpt 105-106 (definition 3)
- Out of the manifold events of his life, his deeds, his feelings, his thoughts, he might make a design, regular, elaborate, complicated, or beautiful; and though it might be no more than an illusion that he had the power of selection, though it might be no more than a fantastic legerdemain in which appearances were interwoven with moonbeams, that did not matter: it seemed, and so to him it was.†
Chpt 105-106 (definition 3)
- They came in, both of them, as all the other details of his life came in, to the elaboration of the design.†
Chpt 105-106 (definition 3)
- He occupied himself, now that the event seemed likely to happen at any time, with elaborate plans for the future.†
Chpt 107-108 (definition 3)
- Athelny entered into his humour, and on Sunday afternoons they made out elaborate itineraries so that Philip should miss nothing that was noteworthy.†
Chpt 107-108 (definition 3)
- But Philip was impatient with himself; he called to mind his idea of the pattern of life: the unhappiness he had suffered was no more than part of a decoration which was elaborate and beautiful; he told himself strenuously that he must accept with gaiety everything, dreariness and excitement, pleasure and pain, because it added to the richness of the design.†
Chpt 111-112 (definition 3)
- There were other signs of prosperity: photographs of the relations of "Erb and his wife in Sunday clothes; on the chimney-piece an elaborate arrangement of shells stuck on a miniature rock; and on each side mugs, "A present from Southend' in Gothic letters, with pictures of a pier and a parade on them.†
Chpt 113-114 (definition 3)
- Also she was pretty, which was rare in those classes in which the constitution has been undermined by bad food, bad air, and unhealthy occupations; she had delicate features and large blue eyes, and a mass of dark hair done in the elaborate fashion of the coster girl.†
Chpt 113-114 (definition 3)
- Philip's friendship with him had been a motive in the design he was elaborating: it was merely sentimental to ignore the fact that the painter was of no further interest to him.†
Chpt 115-116 (definition 3)
- All his plans were suddenly overthrown, and the existence, so elaborately pictured, was no more than a dream which would never be realised.
Chpt 121-122 (definition 1) *elaborately = rich in detail
Definitions:
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(1) (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
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(2) (elaborate as in: an elaborate wink) to exaggerate an actioneditor's notes: At times, this sense of elaborate can further imply that an action was exaggerated by prolonging it (performing it more slowly than normal).
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(3) (elaborate as in: elaborate on your plan) add details or explain in detail