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elaborate
in a sentence
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elaborate as in:  elaborate on your plan

show 10 more with this conextual meaning
  • As we talked, she elaborated on her idea
    elaborated = added details
  • She didn't elaborate any further, and I knew right then that she was holding something back, something that she couldn't tell me, something that made her sad as well.   (source)
    elaborate = add details
  • When I mentioned about Ben asking where my mother was and my saying that she was in Lewiston, but that I didn't want to elaborate, Gram and Gramps looked at each other.   (source)
    elaborate = tell more details
  • He didn't elaborate.   (source)
    elaborate = add more detail
  • Trudy waited for some elaboration from Ida, but understood soon enough that she stood in the presence of a terse oracle indeed.   (source)
    elaboration = addition of more detail
  • Should I elaborate?   (source)
    elaborate = add details
  • He didn't elaborate.   (source)
    elaborate = add detail (to what had been said)
  • He elaborated without encouragement, citing the advantages of Devon's physical hardening program and of a high school diploma when he did in good time reach basic training.   (source)
    elaborated = explained in more detail
  • "Yes," Sue said, and did not elaborate.   (source)
    elaborate = add details
  • He didn't elaborate.   (source)
▲ show less (of above)
show 89 more with this conextual meaning
  • "Good," Professeur Cole says. "More. Elaborate."   (source)
    elaborate = add more detail
  • Dr. Vishnubakat said That's interesting, can you elaborate?   (source)
    elaborate = add details (say more about it)
  • I can elaborate and add that I prefer a different type of bedmate, and that I prefer to make my own moves.   (source)
    elaborate = add detail (to what's been said)
  • He had gotten some clothes, some money, but didn't elaborate.   (source)
    elaborate = tell more details
  • "I wonder if you'd like to come back to London with us?" he asked, making the first move in a campaign whose strategy he had been secretly elaborating ever since, in the little house, he had realized who the "father" of this young savage must be.   (source)
    elaborating = developing details
  • Reading it once more after so many years, I've had to resist a nervous itch to touch it up here, to change it there, to clarify, correct, elaborate, cut.   (source)
    elaborate = add detail
  • In his Indian captivity, moreover, he had gained much knowledge of the properties of native herbs and roots; nor did he conceal from his patients that these simple medicines, Nature's boon to the untutored savage, had quite as large a share of his own confidence as the European Pharmacopoeia, which so many learned doctors had spent centuries in elaborating.   (source)
    elaborating = adding detail
  • During my years as a French student, every textbook I had ever read had elaborated upon the unforgettable jubilance known as Bastille Day, the parade down the Champs-Elysées, the fireworks, the general merriment, and the cherished memories born only of this event.†   (source)
  • Given the Count's expression of curiosity, the young man elaborated: "For the time being, there are a lot of buildings being built in Moscow, but little need for architects.†   (source)
  • But Krum glowered at him, and Harry, somehow struck anew by how tall Krum was, elaborated.†   (source)
  • Later in the week, Williams elaborated further in an interview in the weekly newspaper the Georgia Gazette.†   (source)
  • Robbie elaborated upon his circumstances, then ended by asking politely about the parents of the other fellow.†   (source)
  • Lourdes elaborated on her description of being abandoned in 1989 at a downtown Los Angeles bus station by her smuggler by returning to the station with me in 2004.†   (source)
  • Even after she has laid the receiver in its cradle, Dede goes on elaborating the root system of her anacahuita tree, shading the branches, and then for the fun of it, opening and closing the flap of the envelope to watch the tree come apart and then back together again.†   (source)
  • "God created a world of work and rewards," he elaborated, "on a big balanced scale."†   (source)
  • Peter had not elaborated, but rather had left strict instructions regarding the precise hour at which the door was to be opened.†   (source)
  • And what's more, those movements were perfectly in time to each person's own words — emphasizing and underlining and elaborating on the process of articulation — so that the speaker was, in effect, dancing to his or her own speech.†   (source)
  • On the basis of this dogma the Doctor had elaborated an entire theory of character, which he considered more accurate than astrology.†   (source)
  • Forgive me, my Lady, for elaborating on such an ugly subject at table, but you were being told falsehood and it needed clarifying.†   (source)
  • Chubs elaborated.†   (source)
  • Until she elaborates.†   (source)
  • They used to pretend it was some grand adventure and would sit at the back and play a whispered game in which they took turns elaborating fantasies about the other passengers.†   (source)
  • "Thanks, baby," Adam said without elaborating.†   (source)
  • And then, after she swallowed, she elaborated: "English, because I always went to American schools.†   (source)
  • "A dern old man beat her and used her hard, and that's why she run off," Roscoe elaborated.†   (source)
  • Johnnie nodded, busily at work making a more elaborated night toilet than the others, who were going to bed all about them, paying little attention to their conversation.†   (source)
  • Transferring her unblinking gaze from one person to the next, she elaborated: "Eragon, Angela, you both know what it is like to share someone's thoughts and emotions as they die.†   (source)
  • After Bailey learned definitely that I was his sister, he refused to call me Marguerite, but rather addressed me each time as "Mya Sister," and in later more articulate years, after the need for brevity had shortened the appellation to "My," it was elaborated into "Maya."†   (source)
  • "It's just a white lie," Andrew elaborates.†   (source)
  • I had invested a lot of time and energy into hating Nora and elaborating fantasies of revenge.†   (source)
  • Five minutes later an anonymous announcer elaborated over both NBC systems: From the NBC newsroom in New York!†   (source)
  • Labov's theory has been elaborated in the research of Stanford University linguist Penelope Eckert, who studied language changes originating among high-school students in a predominantly white suburb of Detroit.†   (source)
  • This was the Church of Reason lecture, which, in contrast to his usual sketchy lecture notes, was very long and very carefully elaborated.†   (source)
  • Duke coeds were being asked to sign in and out of dorms, he elaborated.†   (source)
  • Well, I don't feel like elaborating.†   (source)
  • I was elaborating upon my "legend" consistently and Luzan accepted my pathologies.†   (source)
  • His brother Osney elaborated.†   (source)
  • She then elaborated that Aubervilliers was a largely Muslim suburb and that most of her patients were Arabs from North Africa.†   (source)
  • She never elaborated on her feelings.†   (source)
  • The ashtrays (Leslie later elaborated) were of the type everyone was familiar with: usually black, circular, and stamped with such inscriptions as STORK CLUB, "2 I", EL MOROCCO or, in more plebeian settings, BETTY'S PLACE and JOE'S BAR.†   (source)
  • The rest of the epic elaborates it, describing the kinds of immortality Gilgamesh tries for and misses—eternal youth, lasting fame, and so on.†   (source)
  • So you see, the whole of this nineteenth century —its revolutions in Paris, its generations of Russian exiles starting with Herzen, its assassinations of Tsars, some only plotted, others carried out, the whole of the workers' movement of the world, the whole of Marxism in the parliaments and universities of Europe, the whole of this new system of ideas with its newness, the swiftness of its conclusion, its irony, and its pitiless remedies elaborated in the name of pity-all of this was absorbed and expressed in Lenin, who fell upon the old world as the personified retribution for its misdeeds.†   (source)
  • Every time they did not respond to some obvious question I handed them, I always thought that it was simply because I was not explaining it adequately or that I was not elaborating properly on the given theme.†   (source)
  • Jackie said that she had no wish to go back to Terra and Jimmy was elaborating.†   (source)
  • All planes and rockets and bombs are simply elaborations on that primate instinct.   (source)
    elaborations = acts of explaining in detail or adding detail/complexity
  • "Just answer the question. Don't elaborate."   (source)
    elaborate = add details
  • When he spoke, his voice was steady, like a professor elaborating on a subject he taught.   (source)
    elaborating = explaining in detail
  • "His wang is rubbed shiny," Josh elaborates.   (source)
    elaborates = adds details or explains in detail
  • Already he was rehearsing his exit lines: I'm not what you need, you deserve better, I'll ruin your life, and so forth. But it was best to work up to these things, so he elaborated on his new job.   (source)
    elaborated = explained in more detail
  • But no. He knew Henry wanted him to elaborate, but what he wanted to do there at the lake—whom he hoped to find, what he hoped would result from it—required him to go on foot.   (source)
    elaborate = say more about it
  • "It's such a weird life. Yours," she elaborated. "I mean you can have anything you want, go anywhere, do anything."   (source)
    elaborated = added details or explained in detail
  • There were others again, true saintly fathers, whose faculties had been elaborated by weary toil among their books, and by patient thought, and etherealised, moreover, by spiritual communications with the better world, into which their purity of life had almost introduced these holy personages, with their garments of mortality still clinging to them.   (source)
    elaborated = increased (by adding more detail)
  • Maybe disappointed, feeling that she had given up too easily, Camber elaborated.†   (source)
  • As Katerina still looked confused, the Count elaborated.†   (source)
  • The letter was barely literate, but its message was clearly elaborated and needed no translation.†   (source)
  • Then he turned to Ron, ready to exchange the exasperated looks they sometimes shared when Hermione elaborated on far-fetched schemes like SPEW To Harry's consternation, however, Ron did not look exasperated.†   (source)
  • The assault had been so rapid and so triumphant that it could only be understood not as a sudden madness caused by boredom but as the fruit of a plan elaborated over time and down to its smallest detail.†   (source)
  • Nina had told her comrades that she would only be a minute, but as she elaborated on the work that lay ahead, she seemed to forget that they were still standing on the other side of the potted palm.†   (source)
  • The Count elaborated.†   (source)
  • So, the Count elaborated.†   (source)
  • I wasn't sure if I actually knew this or was just elaborating on what the girl in the restaurant had told me.†   (source)
  • A note elaborates that Tio Alejandro was the one who used to own English saddle horses and taught you four girls to ride.†   (source)
  • "Lindsey," Colin elaborated.†   (source)
  • The traders spoke to them in pidgin English, and the slaves used and elaborated it to speak among themselves.†   (source)
  • She hesitated, a little wary of elaborating upon a sexual possibility which the shading of her voice, she knew, had already suggested.†   (source)
  • The doctor belched, then more sharply elaborated: "I know you're a Polack, but are you also another one of these filthy Communists?"†   (source)
  • But Sophie, as I pointed out before and as she elaborated to Hoss on that strange day of their aborted intimacy, was one of the chosen elite and therefore had been "lucky" by comparison with most of the others newly arrived at the camp.†   (source)
  • It would perhaps have been faintly comic had not his misplaced jealousy contained seeds of the violent, and worse ... Earlier there was a bizarre, peripheral tragedy affecting Sophie which should be recounted here if only because of the way in which it elaborates all the foregoing.†   (source)
  • "It was in the afternoon paper—the endorsement," Sadie elaborated.†   (source)
  • These three had elaborated old Major's teachings into a complete system of thought, to which they gave the name of Animalism.†   (source)
  • The teacher had been elaborating upon the text: "What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"†   (source)
  • She had the plan all elaborated.†   (source)
  • Out rush a bristle of horned suspicions, horror, horror, horror—but what is the use of painfully elaborating these consecutive sentences when what one needs is nothing consecutive but a bark, a groan?†   (source)
  • He had been elaborating dangers and defences, expecting the worst, rehearsing his best.†   (source)
  • It was those two between them who really elaborated the rules.†   (source)
  • I lavishly elaborated these people and their doings, of course.†   (source)
  • On Sundays, she went to church elaborated.†   (source)
  • Its leader was most stunningly arrayed in the same colors, elaborated, however, with epaulets and a belt of silver, with a short sword dangling at one side.†   (source)
  • The inception of the idea of the cliff villa which they had elaborated as a fantasy one day was a typical example of the forces divorcing them from the first simple arrangements in Zurich.†   (source)
  • Her discretions interested him almost as much as her imprudences: he was so sure that both were part of the same carefully-elaborated plan.†   (source)
  • Elaborated in the imagination of Mr. Gould, the probationary assistant in the National School, this theory took the form that the stranger was an Anarchist in disguise, preparing explosives, and he resolved to undertake such detective operations as his time permitted.†   (source)
  • They elaborated.†   (source)
  • Moreover, without my paying any heed to the contradiction that there was in my wishing to look at and to touch with my organs of sense what had been elaborated by the spell of my dreams and not perceived by my senses at all—though all the more tempting to them, in consequence, more different from anything that they knew—it was that which recalled to me the reality of these visions, which inflamed my desire all the more by seeming to hint a promise that my desire should be satisfied.†   (source)
  • 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.†   (source)
  • The incredulous tone had vanished and a shoal of reporters and inquirers were already at work elaborating the matter.†   (source)
  • 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.†   (source)
  • Hepzibah then took up Rasselas, and began to read of the Happy Valley, with a vague idea that some secret of a contented life had there been elaborated, which might at least serve Clifford and herself for this one day.†   (source)
  • This was the ultimate belief on which all the systems elaborated by human thought in almost all their ramifications rested.†   (source)
  • But the idea of this dried-up pedant, this elaborator of small explanations about as important as the surplus stock of false antiquities kept in a vendor's back chamber, having first got this adorable young creature to marry him, and then passing his honeymoon away from her, groping after his mouldy futilities (Will was given to hyperbole)—this sudden picture stirred him with a sort of comic disgust: he was divided between the impulse to laugh aloud and the equally unseasonable impulse to burst into scornful invective.†   (source)
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elaborate as in:  an elaborate design

show 10 more with this conextual meaning
  • Their culture has elaborate wedding ceremonies.
    elaborate = with many details or features
  • It is an elaborate remake of her independent film, but this time with a Hollywood budget.
    elaborate = special due to added detail or features
  • It has an elaborate lace pattern.
    elaborate = with complicated detail
  • I slept in the elaborate braided hair my mother did for the reaping and it doesn't look too bad, so I just leave it up.   (source)
    elaborate = with special features or arrangement
  • The pile was growing there: a Polaroid camera, a transistor radio, an elaborate electric train set—and several sealed envelopes containing cash.   (source)
    elaborate = with many details or features
  • But over the past few months, I'd come to see my rig for what it was: an elaborate contraption for deceiving my senses, to allow me to live in a world that didn't exist.   (source)
    elaborate = complex
  • A fire was crackling under an elaborately carved mantelpiece ahead of them, and several Slytherins were silhouetted around it in high-backed chairs.   (source)
    elaborately = with much detail or complexity
  • Those other kids always come up with the most elaborate stories as to who they are, and why they're selling.   (source)
    elaborate = complicated
  • One night I was lying in my bunk wearing my elaborate coat-hanger braces when the bedroom door opened.   (source)
  • And because beavers have built a network of elaborate dams across this creek, the route leads directly through a three-acre expanse of standing water.   (source)
    elaborate = with many details or features
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show 89 more with this conextual meaning
  • Tooling around the island in borrowed cars, they came upon several airfields, but when they drew closer, they realized that all of the planes and equipment were fake, made of plywood, an elaborate ruse designed to fool Japanese reconnaissance planes.   (source)
    elaborate = detailed and complicated
  • Grant was surprised: the construction was elaborate.   (source)
    elaborate = extravagant (large or expensive)
  • Have you noticed the more you try not to think, the more elaborate your thinking episodes get? While trying not to think, I spent twenty minutes on this fascinating question: if you could have one miracle from the Bible happen to you, what would it be?   (source)
    elaborate = detailed and complicated
  • Whether disguised as Ben Franklin or a lowly drummer boy, he always acted a role in the elaborately staged pageants which he wrote and directed.   (source)
    elaborately = developed with much detail
  • Rabbit Army was already doing some elaborate dance down at their end of the room.   (source)
    elaborate = complex (with many details or features)
  • …hid their women behind elaborate wooden masks...   (source)
    elaborate = detailed in design
  • ...I was so clumsy and fumbling and embarrassed that my behavior throughout lunch amounted to one long and elaborate apology which, when she offered me a second dessert, I saw she had accepted.   (source)
    elaborate = detailed
  • The chess board seemed to hold elaborate secrets waiting to be untangled.   (source)
    elaborate = complex
  • I told them about the elaborate network of vacuum tubes that carried messages throughout the ship.   (source)
    elaborate = complex and detailed
  • He peered with elaborate caution between branches at the edge and could see Robert sitting on guard at the top of the cliff.   (source)
    elaborate = detailed (used as emphasis)
  • Beyond that, the city has never cared so much about us to bother with an elaborate chase like this to find us.   (source)
    elaborate = complicated with lots of detail
  • Whether it was a dream or an elaborate game, she'd show them all she was a good sport.   (source)
    elaborate = detailed and complicated
  • Fadier burst out laughing and Modier and Margot joined in, but I felt like crying because all my work and elaborate notes were lost.   (source)
  • Other versions were much more elaborate, full of descriptions and scraps of dialogue.   (source)
    elaborate = detailed and complex
  • Even without all the elaborate arrangements, there was little chance of anyone tracing us back to Blount.   (source)
    elaborate = complicated
  • But before the blades sliced into action, the group scattered, each man running as far from Hatter as he could get, which didn't stop them from later reporting that they had witnessed the menacing figure kill upwards of twenty innocent civilians with his elaborate weaponry, themselves living to tell about it only by the grace of God.   (source)
  • Maybe it was all just an elaborate joke, the final crusher, the ultimate punch line.   (source)
    elaborate = having details and complexity
  • She was dressed in bright red from the top of her elaborate turban to the tips of her polished fingernails,   (source)
    elaborate = with special features or arrangement
  • She finally got out of the house again that night by performing an elaborate ritual about having to go to the library.   (source)
    elaborate = detailed (perhaps complex)
  • I watched him go through the elaborate ritual of lighting up--the flip of the thin cigarrillo into his lips and then the spark, a single practiced snap of the thumb.   (source)
    elaborate = special (with carefully arranged details)
  • [As Ruth opens her gift from Travis] ...and lifts out an elaborate, but very elaborate, wide gardening hat, and all the adults break up at the sight of it   (source)
    elaborate = having details and complexity
  • This girl thought I just had on a really elaborate costume.   (source)
    elaborate = fancy or complicated (with many parts or details)
  • All of the shops in Paris have outdone themselves with elaborate window displays, and the butcher is no exception.   (source)
    elaborate = having details and complexity
  • He was mad, as if I'd elaborately planned getting sick.   (source)
    elaborately = with much detail or complexity
  • There was just something exciting about maintaining the pretense that nothing had changed between them; it gave the relationship an illicit feeling, almost like an affair. ... Every now and then while Beth and Logan were engaged in keeping up their elaborate facade, Nana would mutter something nonsensical like "camels in the Sahara" or "it's like hair and slippers."   (source)
    elaborate = complicated
  • The skirt of her flowered dress trailed after her making a rustling noise as she walked and her yellow silk turban was elaborately tied.   (source)
    elaborately = with much detail or complexity
  • She eyed the gold foil and elaborate bow on the package she held with more suspicion than pleasure.   (source)
    elaborate = fancy (complicated or special)
  • Some carried battle-axes with carved handles and elaborate heads.   (source)
    elaborate = complex (in design)
  • we spent a lot of time concocting elaborate plans that we never had the nerve to carry out.   (source)
    elaborate = detailed or complex
  • they could see through the portholes the rich polished helm, the gleaming mahogany of the main cabin with its elaborate bar.   (source)
    elaborate = detailed in design
  • A simple face-mask and oxygen set would take care of that: there was no need for anything elaborate.   (source)
    elaborate = complex
  • But in any case an elaborate mental training, undergone in childhood and grouping itself round the Newspeak words crimestop, blackwhite, and doublethink, makes him unwilling and unable to think too deeply on any subject whatever.   (source)
    elaborate = detailed
  • At the same time, we see to it that all country sports shall entail the use of elaborate apparatus.   (source)
    elaborate = special
  • I was a little shocked at the elaborateness of the lie.   (source)
    elaborateness = level of detail
  • Oh, how pretty it was—a lovely soft brown gloria with all the gloss of silk; a skirt with dainty frills and shirrings; a waist elaborately pintucked in the most fashionable way, with a little ruffle of filmy lace at the neck.   (source)
    elaborately = with much detail or complexity
  • I think he believed it was something more elaborate than bread pudding.   (source)
    elaborate = complex/special
  • Very elaborate, the costume of Punchinello-ruffles and frills, a hump, a high hat.   (source)
    elaborate = having many complex details
  • All his plans were suddenly overthrown, and the existence, so elaborately pictured, was no more than a dream which would never be realised.   (source)
    elaborately = rich in detail
  • Distinguished men, beautiful women, notabilities from every European country had already filed past him, had exchanged the elaborate bows and curtsies with him, which the extravagant fashion of the time demanded, and then, laughing and talking, had dispersed in the ball, reception, and card rooms beyond.   (source)
    elaborate = with many details or features
  • On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A. It was ... of a splendour in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony.   (source)
    elaborate = ornate (intricate or complex)
  • It might be an elaborate setup, an invention of Crake's, a practical joke to frighten him.   (source)
    elaborate = having much detail and complexity
  • There would be no elaborate formation to accept the surrender of the other army.   (source)
    elaborate = complicated
  • From then on, I began to think of the Hunt as an elaborate D&D module.   (source)
    elaborate = with many details or features
  • In the other, he had begun creating an elaborate Japanese-English dictionary.   (source)
    elaborate = detailed
  • The shops here were mid-to-high end, the displays elaborate.   (source)
    elaborate = having details and complexity
  • This elaborate story, you can't say, Hey, by the way, I don't know the ending.   (source)
  • Huang Taitai had made elaborate plans, but our wedding was very small.   (source)
  • The chrome of the elaborate, two-tiered front bumper was dull as ore.   (source)
    elaborate = fancy or ornate
  • Lying in bed at night, I made up elaborate stories to bring Linda alive in my sleep.   (source)
    elaborate = having details and complexity
  • Sorrento had been playing an elaborate mind game with me.   (source)
    elaborate = complex
  • Among the POWs, there was an elaborate sentry system to monitor the Bird's movements.   (source)
    elaborate = complicated
  • Most armies needed three months because they had to memorize dozens of elaboration formations.   (source)
    elaboration = something that adds detail or complexity
  • At first she thought it had all been some elaborate joke,   (source)
    elaborate = complicated
  • In contrast to the elaborate living area, this was spartan.   (source)
    elaborate = having details and complexity
  • The equipment was elaborate, unlicensed, and of course, illegal.   (source)
  • He was dressed in rags, but rags that had once been an elaborate costume.   (source)
  • "I heard from her a week ago," my father said, pencil in hand as he doodled an elaborate building.   (source)
  • Wide pathways act as roads through neighborhoods of elaborate tombs.   (source)
  • The elaborate wardrobe had no effect, but at the library door, she gasped and stopped.   (source)
  • Fuming, she swiveled to the elaborate grillwork along the far wall.   (source)
  • The helmets came down to below the ear and had a nose guard. Nothing elaborate.   (source)
  • The two of them were toting flowers, and an elaborate layette, all fancy crocheting and white satin bows.   (source)
    elaborate = with special features or arrangement
  • And now when we were served chicken livers for dinner I couldn't help conceiving a mental picture of President Roosevelt and my father and Finny's father and numbers of other large old men sitting down to porterhouse steak in some elaborate but secluded men's secret society room.   (source)
    elaborate = special (with carefully arranged details)
  • Dodgson wanted more than bacterial DNA; he wanted frozen embryos, and he knew InGen guarded its embryos with the most elaborate security measures.   (source)
    elaborate = with many details or features
  • The whole household seemed so reasonable, she had to keep reminding herself it was all a stage setting in some kind of elaborate dream.   (source)
    elaborate = having details and complexity
  • It gave me a feeling like being in Beekman's toy department to tell the truth--everything elaborately displayed.   (source)
    elaborately = with much detail or complexity
  • He didn't see the large, elaborately decorated rug closing in on him, held up from behind by six of Paris' bravest carpet salesmen.   (source)
    elaborately = ornately (with intricate or complex detail)
  • The poison in Serenna veriformans was a minor example of the elaborate chemical arsenal of weapons that plants had evolved.   (source)
    elaborate = sophisticated
  • Where the pencil silhouette was favoured, the frock was invariably accompanied by an elaborate tunic of taffeta or printed satin.   (source)
    elaborate = with special features or arrangement
  • Neither Louie nor anyone else knew that Jimmie's attempts to pass as a student were apparently an elaborate ruse.   (source)
    elaborate = complex (in design)
  • The outside of the suit was covered with an elaborate exoskeleton, a network of artificial tendons and joints that could both sense and inhibit my movements.   (source)
    elaborate = sophisticated
  • Everywhere, extensive and elaborate planting emphasized the feeling that they were entering a new world, a prehistoric tropical world, and leaving the normal world behind.   (source)
    elaborate = with many details or features
  • She's been fed her last, elaborate meal, she's been scented and anointed, songs have been sung in her praise, prayers have been offered.   (source)
    elaborate = with special features or arrangement
  • In mid-April, it was their mission to search out and destroy the elaborate tunnel complexes in the Than Khe area south of Chu Lai.   (source)
    elaborate = having details and complexity
  • They indulged in court intrigues, held magnificent feasts, and fell elaborately in love with one another's wives.   (source)
    elaborately = intensely or passionately (abundantly in every aspect)
  • Louie invented an imaginary system, making a drawing so elaborate that, it was later written, the system looked like "a ruptured octopus."   (source)
    elaborate = detailed and complicated
  • She turned to face the exit and began to execute a series of elaborate gestures in the air in front of her while whispering the words of some incantation.   (source)
    elaborate = sophisticated
  • Once stolen, the papers made elaborate secret journeys, passed hand to hand until they reached the translators, Harris, Fitzgerald, and Maher.   (source)
    elaborate = complicated
  • It was black and chrome in color, with elaborate boomerang-shaped headgear and symmetrical red breastplates that made it look like a female version of Tranzor Z.   (source)
  • The gray-bearded wizard was hunched over an elaborate DJ mixing board, one headphone pressed to his ear, biting his lower lip in auditory ecstasy as his fingers scratched ancient vinyl on a set of silver turntables.   (source)
    elaborate = fancy or complicated
  • Once, while Louie was out, she painted their dreary kitchen with elaborate illustrations of vines and animals, hoping to surprise him.   (source)
    elaborate = ornate (intricate or complex)
  • Students went out for these teams just like they did at schools in the real world, and they played using elaborate sports-capable haptic rigs that required them to actually do all of their own running, jumping, kicking, tackling, and so on.   (source)
    elaborate = sophisticated
  • One of the loftier buildings on Broadcast Avenue, it towered up from a wide, flat hilt, housed several thousand employees, five elaborate studios, including the most lavish new set on the East Coast, and enough power to beam transmissions to every pocket of the planet and its orbiting stations.   (source)
    elaborate = fancy (with many special details and features)
  • He mouthed the words, a pencil in his hand as he drew an elaborate greenhouse that he could never afford to really build.   (source)
    elaborate = having details and complexity
  • The men in elaborately tied scarves sitting at the table beside us look disgusted, so I pretend to twirl the ends of my Nutella mustache.   (source)
    elaborately = with much detail or complexity
  • Resigned, she rose and faced an elaborately dressed hair, flowing back from a painfully thin face echoed the hue of his slacks.   (source)
  • The teas were always elaborate and the women were expected to dress for the occasion, mohair or Ultrasuede, whatever happened to be the thing.   (source)
    elaborate = having details and complexity
  • These were rich men, powerful men: silver brooches, lush furs, polished leather, chains of silver baubles around their necks, elaborately filigreed silver goblets, silver-handled knives sticking out of the piles of meat before them.   (source)
    elaborately = with much detail or complexity
  • There were no vacancies in Whispering Pines, though my father had once drawn up an elaborate plan of how he could skim a measley two yards off our side yard and sell something like twenty new plots.   (source)
    elaborate = having details and complexity
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elaborate as in:  an elaborate wink

show 10 more with this conextual meaning
  • Brinker turned elaborately toward him.   (source)
    elaborately = in an exaggerated manner
  • Brother isn't really crazy yet he—he's an elaborate neurotic.   (source)
    elaborate = exaggerated (or with lots of detail)
  • I had clearly gotten the best of her, so I sobered to an elaborate caricature of humility.   (source)
    elaborate = exaggerated
  • Elaborately casual, they start sauntering off as Krupke appears.   (source)
    elaborately = in an exaggerated manner
  • But Lennie made an elaborate pantomime of innocence.   (source)
    elaborate = exaggerated (or with lots of detail)
  • [Nick describing Gatsby:]  ...I was looking at an elegant young rough-neck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd.   (source)
    elaborate = exaggerated
  • The only things that really caught my attention were occasional phrases, his gestures, and some elaborate tirades.   (source)
    elaborate = exaggerated (possibly with much detail and complexity)
  • They are the more popular crowd at high school and every evening about half-past seven they gather to stand talking together with elaborate unconcern, while in actuality they are sharply watching the cars going by to see what fellows and girls are out together; they watch to see who is having a Coke with whom and to report any violations on the part of the girls who are supposed to be going steady.   (source)
    elaborate = exaggerated
  • 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.   (source)
    elaborately = in an exaggerated manner
  • And with an elaborate sea-salute, this fellow ... stepped coolly towards the door and disappeared out of the house.   (source)
    elaborate = exaggerated (possibly with much detail and complexity)
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show 4 more with this conextual meaning
  • I turned around with elaborate resignation.   (source)
    elaborate = exaggerated
  • Brinker began talking to him in the elaborately casual manner of someone being watched.   (source)
    elaborately = exaggeratedly
  • He coughed and then elaborately refilled and lit his pipe.   (source)
    elaborately = in an exaggerated manner
  • Jody went miserably out the back door and closed the screen with elaborate quietness.   (source)
    elaborate = exaggerated (perhaps very slowly)
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show 10 more examples with any meaning
  • Without my relatives, I am but a thread; together, we form a colorful and elaborate Persian carpet.†   (source)
  • Flying close to the proton membrane, it could be seen as a vast plane made of complex, elaborate integrated circuits.†   (source)
  • The Count's assertion had seemed so axiomatic that he had not prepared an elaboration.†   (source)
  • Paul hurried past ornate cosmetics counters and stands displaying elaborate hats and matching purses.†   (source)
  • Immediately, the cap transformed into an elaborate bronze war helmet.†   (source)
  • It seemed as if everybody in the hood had their own nickname and tag, some more elaborate than others.†   (source)
  • He doesn't elaborate.†   (source)
  • I was subjected to an elaborate admission process and given a beeper to activate if I was ever threatened or distressed while inside the prison.†   (source)
  • My grandfather loved creating elaborate treasure hunts around our house, a string of clues that eventually led to my real gift.†   (source)
  • He didn't elaborate, and his face said he didn't plan to.†   (source)
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show 190 more examples with any meaning
  • Her hair was set in elaborate and curiously rigid curls that contrasted oddly with her heavy-jawed face.†   (source)
  • Madame Ruelle whispers that occupation authorities are blaming the attack on an elaborate network of anti-occupation radio broadcasts.†   (source)
  • They passed the Fickle Fountain, an elaborately carved monument that occasionally spat out water in which young children played.†   (source)
  • If he thought being arrested was bad ...and then she would concoct elaborate revenge schemes in her head, complex and vicious.†   (source)
  • As in years past, Williams set about making elaborate preparations well in advance.†   (source)
  • It was a high-stacked Dodge painted burgundy in Anacortes, elaborately pin-striped and with decorative exhaust extensions pillared just behind the gleaming cab—a schoolboy's play truck, in short.†   (source)
  • Just above the desk (which had a microscope and an elaborate computer setup) was a bulletin board covered with photographs of plants.†   (source)
  • Each had decorated his or her space elaborately but tastefully—one office full of sailing paraphernalia, most of it seeming airborne, hanging from the exposed beams, another arrayed with bonsai trees.†   (source)
  • Mr. Cartier got up and had Mary elaborate on the costs of the delay.†   (source)
  • There were rural people who owned televisions but only got a grainy public broadcasting station because they couldn't afford the money it would take to bring cable lines up their dirt road; and there were others who had bought elaborate satellite systems so that they could catch Japanese soaps or Sister Mary Margaret's Prayer Hour at three in the morning.†   (source)
  • The first time he took the armadillo home with him, he brought a box stuffed with cotton—it was such an elaborately conceived and strongly built carrying case that the armadillo could have been mailed safely overseas in it.†   (source)
  • Don't bother dressing too elaborately—Brullo told me that you're still training this afternoon.†   (source)
  • I can tell by the shift in his expression that he doesn't need me to elaborate on the question.†   (source)
  • "Uh ...not really," I said, realizing that I probably should've bothered to concoct a more elaborate cover story.†   (source)
  • The streets of Pentos were pitch-dark when they set out in Illyrio's elaborately carved palanquin.†   (source)
  • I find Peeta admiring a table of elaborately decorated cakes.†   (source)
  • She crossed her legs in an elaborate, pretzel-like formation the boys would have thought impossible.†   (source)
  • Then he goes around behind thedesk and sits down, slowly and it seems to me elaborately.†   (source)
  • I have on an elaborate white gown, laced and corseted, with a silk overskirt and draped layers in the back.†   (source)
  • Even being lied to constantly, though hardly like love, was sustained attention; he must care about her to fabricate so elaborately and over such a long stretch of time.†   (source)
  • Under the noses of the Nazis and at great risk, the inmates secretly plotted and established an elaborate schedule of teaching, learning, producing and performing for both adults and children.†   (source)
  • Crushed, Tita took elaborate pains to cook better meals each day.†   (source)
  • Originally, this was the day I was going to leave Orlando—I was going to go to graduation and then do all of these elaborate pranks on graduation night with you, and then I was going to leave the next morning.†   (source)
  • The palace's elaborate, two-story entry doors were gilded in gold and nearly blinding with the sun glinting off their sheen as they opened.†   (source)
  • It had become the centerpiece of an elaborate complex, crisscrossed with artificial canals and connecting bridges.†   (source)
  • I didn't want him to elaborate.†   (source)
  • I watched the elaborate dance of the room, couples coming together to speak, separating to find new partners.†   (source)
  • The tank twirled right through an elaborate candelabrum.†   (source)
  • We walked the length of an elaborate hedge-lined path.†   (source)
  • People streamed around us on the windy corner: schoolgirls in uniform, laughing and running and dodging around us; nannies pushing elaborate prams with babies seated in pairs and threes.†   (source)
  • Rice fields are carved into mountainsides in an elaborate series of terraces, or painstakingly constructed from marshland and river plains.†   (source)
  • I'm thinking he won't elaborate further, and I'm about to press him for a more detailed answer, when he blows air out of his cheeks and says, "My father's here.†   (source)
  • When I was growing up I'd have elaborate fantasies about my funeral.†   (source)
  • I can't read his face, and I have no idea what Henri is about to tell him—if he will again make up some elaborate story or, for once, tell him the truth—and it's this latter that I'm truly hoping for.†   (source)
  • The woman waved at the fumes elaborately.†   (source)
  • Elaborate rugs dotted the polished wood floor, which glowed with the light from three gold candelabra hanging from the ceiling.†   (source)
  • A doorman in an elaborate costume stood at the entrance, and although he seemed surprised by their lack of luggage he overlooked their dirty clothes with a friendly smile.†   (source)
  • He lived in the earth, got drunk, inhabited the leaves and herbs, not a sanitized doctor's office — or a church of spires and colored glass and elaborate carvings.†   (source)
  • I tried to figure out what they were saying by reading the elaborate gestures that the man made with his right hand.†   (source)
  • The rooms were small but high-ceilinged, with rough but elaborately carved furniture from an era I did not recognize.†   (source)
  • It was like we were doing one of those elaborate Modegan court dances, where the partners stand scant inches apart, but—if they are skilled—never touch.†   (source)
  • In the hazy darkness I couldn't make out her features, but only the beautiful oval shape of her face with its elaborate crown of hair.†   (source)
  • I should not elaborate in this public place.†   (source)
  • Edward helped me into his car, being very careful of the wisps of silk and chiffon, the flowers he'd just pinned into my elaborately styled curls, and my bulky walking cast.†   (source)
  • They prepare an elaborate meal, fish and meat bought one bitterly cold morning at Chinatown and Haymarket, cooked as his father liked them best, with extra potatoes and fresh coriander leaves.†   (source)
  • She wore elaborate wigs and talked real down home, with a heavy, deep accent full of "I ain'ts" and "Come owns."†   (source)
  • What they may miss, though, is the much more elaborate pattern running through the fabric of the play.†   (source)
  • She sat slightly straighter and offered me tea, gesturing slightly, fingers twitching again as she communicated with someone else—her servant, it turned out, who, with a slightly harried air, brought tea in an elaborately enameled flask, and bowls to match.†   (source)
  • I must have looked confused, because Macon felt compelled to elaborate.†   (source)
  • When an influential Wisconsin woman named Flora Ginty sent an elaborately carved wooden door, Hayden turned it down.†   (source)
  • So it went for an hour, large bouquets and small ones, elaborate set pieces and home-grown plants in clay pots.†   (source)
  • It was so pretty, so elaborately basket-woven among hen and egg, we did not at first understand what we saw.†   (source)
  • In Ramadi, with our kill total becoming astronomical, the statements became mandatory and elaborate.†   (source)
  • Could you elaborate on that?†   (source)
  • As the day went on, the story behind the picture grew more elaborate.†   (source)
  • From this vantage point she could see the upper floors of the old apartment buildings that lined the avenue, elaborately carved with gargoyles and ornamental cornices.†   (source)
  • He waited, to see if I was going to elaborate.†   (source)
  • He had all these elaborate plays, in part, to compensate for what he saw as Briarcrest's systematic lack of brute force.†   (source)
  • The missile officer's panel was the most elaborate.†   (source)
  • I was coming up with all kinds of elaborate technical fixes like trying to implant electrodes directly into the brain.†   (source)
  • Terrifying dark bundles loomed where the life-size saints had stood, each with its influenza-pale expression, its elaborate wig woven from the hair of someone long dead, its rubies, pearls and emeralds of painted glass, and the rich gown of a Florentine aristocrat.†   (source)
  • The bucolic quality of the Fugees' new home was so extraordinary that it almost seemed like a kind of elaborate joke.†   (source)
  • He watches something on television and believes it happened to him—and then will make up an elaborate story about how it happened.†   (source)
  • Stuart, unconvinced and suspicious of the elaborate and ridiculous cover story Herold spun for him, reluctantly offered to feed them.†   (source)
  • It was the first time she had gone alone into that office, saturated with showers of creosote and crammed with books bound in the hides of unknown animals, blurred school pictures, honorary degrees, astrolabes, and elaborately worked daggers collected over the years: a secret sanctuary that she always considered the only part of her husband's private life to which she had no access because it was not part of love, so that the few times she had been there she had gone with him, and the visits had always been very brief.†   (source)
  • He's in a crackpot-theory mood, just waiting for me to ask him to elaborate.†   (source)
  • Then Doctor Nolan unlocked a door at the end of the hall and led me down a flight of stairs into the mysterious basement corridors that linked, in an elaborate network of tunnels and burrows, all the various buildings of the hospital.†   (source)
  • The girl sat up, and the frills and lace and ruffles floated into place on the most elaborate dress Bella had ever seen.†   (source)
  • We shook hands elaborately.†   (source)
  • At the end of the evening, Mr. Tang thanked LuLing elaborately for some delightful hours of remembering the old times.†   (source)
  • I waited, but she didn't elaborate.†   (source)
  • Long ago, in his youth, when he'd been a "troubled teen," as he told her without elaboration, a social worker at his school had signed him up for the Big Brother program, and he'd always felt that his big brother—his mentor, he calls him—kept him on track.†   (source)
  • Dan waited, although he wasn't sure he wanted Felix to elaborate.†   (source)
  • A compulsively methodical man, he had elaborate systems in place that were supposed to prevent such a catastrophe.†   (source)
  • Dad looked up with me for a little longer, but when I didn't elaborate he shook his head and went down into the basement.†   (source)
  • I repeated, bristling, but she didn't elaborate.†   (source)
  • At first the silence continued, as though the local persons thought I intended to elaborate further.†   (source)
  • It felt strange in the hand, curiously sensitive to the touch but at the same time giving the impression that it was synthetic, insoluble, elaborately engineered.†   (source)
  • The Motormat was an elaborate rail system that transported food and beverages from the kitchen to parked cars.†   (source)
  • One of the more exciting tasks he'd been assigned was assisting a sailor who had been injured in the jungle, Adam said, but he wouldn't elaborate on the story, simply saying that he "helped with the medevac."†   (source)
  • The cages had elaborate bolts on the doors to prevent fiddling by primate fingers.†   (source)
  • Nala doesn't really like anyone except me:' Sappho, a tiny dark-haired vamp whose tattoos were elaborate symbols Damien had told me were Greek alphabet glyphs, smiled fondly at Nala.†   (source)
  • Want to elaborate?†   (source)
  • They realize that no money, no church service, no eulogy, no funeral procession no matter how elaborate, can remove the legacy of a mean spirit.†   (source)
  • At lunch, I squeezed in next to Maya and Rand, who were hunched over yet another one of Maya's giant dot games, which were getting more and more elaborate.†   (source)
  • "The Lord of Rags and Tatters," I said with a false smile as I bowed elaborately and gestured to his ratty cloak.†   (source)
  • While he had fewer tattoos than his companion, they were more elaborate-not the self-inflicted work of an amateur but epics of art contrived by Honolulu and Yokohama masters.†   (source)
  • Her estranged husband, Luc, was also back in the picture, involved in some kind of elaborate financial scheme.†   (source)
  • Their nails shone, their skin glowed, and the hair be-neath their elaborately crocheted skullcaps looked drawn on with conte crayon.†   (source)
  • Wondering, momentarily, if he's now supposed to get up and leave, he tries to extend the meeting by asking the professor to elaborate.†   (source)
  • They drank coffee from enameled tin cups and the man pushed the bowls toward them and gestured elaborately.†   (source)
  • He might plan elaborately before a battle, but once it was joined his one desire was to close with the enemy and destroy him.†   (source)
  • They seemed to have taken all of their smoothly cultivated ignorance, their exquisitely learned self-hatred, their elaborately designed hopelessness and sucked it all up into a fiery cone of scorn that had burned for ages in the hollows of their minds—cooled—and spilled over lips of outrage, consuming whatever was in its path.†   (source)
  • Ever since the Sunday morning of the automobile ride, Shade Buckheath had been making elaborate pretense of having forgotten that such a person as Johnnie Consadine existed.†   (source)
  • Elaborate crystal chandeliers hang from the high ceiling.†   (source)
  • He learned to dance—Virginians loved to dance and he was no exception—and he learned to comport himself in the elaborately polite society of the day with perfect manners and polish.†   (source)
  • Elaborate.†   (source)
  • Billy hadn't said much since regaining consciousness, hadn't responded very elaborately to the news of Valencia's death and Robert's coming home from the war and so on-so it was generally believed that he was a vegetable.†   (source)
  • I would like someone to elaborate on the subject for me.†   (source)
  • It had many windows with old, elaborate wooden shutters opening onto balconies.†   (source)
  • 'I was afraid of that,' Colonel Korn remarked with an elaborate sigh, locking his fingers together comfortably on top of his smooth, bald, broad, shiny brown head.†   (source)
  • They are remembered with elaborate murals that plead for a stop to the senseless killing, or just a few thin lines scrawled by a friend with a felt tip pen and a broken heart.†   (source)
  • She lived to fuss, and enjoyed putting on elaborate meals for people, even if she didn't know them.†   (source)
  • But he doesn't elaborate.†   (source)
  • As Max struggled to draw the elaborate breastplate, a cornmotion at the far end of the hall grabbed his attention.†   (source)
  • But when it turns out to be some elaborate hoax, I shall say I told you so and not feel one bit of sympathy for you.†   (source)
  • She was in the midst of an elaborate cooking project, making gooey cheese and chicken enchiladas, and I was "helping."†   (source)
  • Jackie Kennedy refers to her new home as "the president's house" and takes her inspiration from Thomas Jefferson's White House, elaborately decorated by the former ambassador to France.†   (source)
  • He shakes his head but doesn't elaborate.†   (source)
  • They drew long and elaborate family-trees with innumerable branches.†   (source)
  • I had watched a girl my own age shining at the center of one of their elaborate ceremonies.†   (source)
  • If this is an elaborate test, something else I'm supposed to pass somehow, you will never see the light of day again.†   (source)
  • They watched in silence as the elaborately dressed men and women settled into their places in the gallery.†   (source)
  • Sara is laughing loudly and elaborately at the antics of her husband, across the room, having decided not to get into this, after all.†   (source)
  • He was a style of gentlemen we did not much see in our small village, his periwig so large and elaborate that his rather pinched, white-powdered face seemed lost beneath its mass of tumbling curls.†   (source)
  • You've been giving me some kind of elaborate runaround, Uncle Jack, and I've never known you to do it before.†   (source)
  • in point of fact, ellen rimbauer apparently became obsessed with recounting her nearly nightly bedroom activities over the next several months, writing almost exclusively about her husband's increased addiction to these events and the elaborate acts he conceived for both his wife and his wife's best friend and servant.†   (source)
  • Bond Tours were elaborate coast-to-coast touring shows, organized by the Treasury Department.†   (source)
  • The elaborate one that said, 'I'll be late'?†   (source)
  • She wore her long hair elaborately braided in the Tibetan fashion, under an urdwa, a wool cap adorned with beads and shells and antique coins.†   (source)
  • He argues that "the sixties swept away lofty oratory and marginalized elaborately constructed prose," to the point where the American public now distrusts formality in language as insincere.†   (source)
  • Later, more elaborate wooden sleds were built with iron runners to increase the speed and intensity of the ride.†   (source)
  • The Talentine-show plan felt elaborate, but it wasn't.†   (source)
  • Elaborate funeral cars stood along the curb, one a dull black with windows shaped like Gothic arches, through which I saw funeral flowers piled upon a casket.†   (source)
  • The Pentagon war rooms had far more elaborate equipment, but this was the miniaturized equal of most well-structured intelligence stations.†   (source)
  • They wore fine, elaborate clothes of all colors and patterns.†   (source)
  • Without being told, I soon assimilated the elaborate rules that governed the relations between men and women.†   (source)
  • It was hard to believe that a huge stadium was dug below the surface, and even more amazing was how, beneath the stadium, was an elaborate, multileveled palace.†   (source)
  • Nelson tosses me a wink and runs backward down the road, throwing Granny and me elaborate waves.†   (source)
  • Beyond this point he hadn't considered any elaborate plans.†   (source)
  • She had wanted to wear her sister's elaborate wedding dress, but their pennilessness called for something less formal.†   (source)
  • Nothing elaborate, just those fundamental principles that everybody knew was proper purpose of goiverament.†   (source)
  • All Mom says is that the buildings in Havana are completely decayed, held up by elaborate configurations of wooden planks.†   (source)
  • No elaboration was forthcoming.†   (source)
  • At the gate were two grenadiers, private soldiers so elaborately dressed that they put to shame those Brazilian birds in the zoo who died each winter in droves because for them Rome was as cold as the Arctic.†   (source)
  • It seemed like an obvious lie, but I could not understand why she would concoct such elaborate stories.†   (source)
  • This last was stated without explanation or elaboration, as if the words "profit motive" were the self-evident brand of ultimate evil.†   (source)
  • Swaddled in elaborately woven costumes of flowing design, bright colors, and rich gold, I was a pseudo-African, who'd never seen Africa.†   (source)
  • Later, more elaborate wooden sleds were built with iron runners to increase the speed and intensity of the ride.†   (source)
  • Many other women walked on the street—sworn sisters who'd married out to new villages and had reunited on this special day—dressed in their best skirts and wearing elaborately embroidered headdresses.†   (source)
  • The same eagle and swastika design, and underneath it, in heavy elaborate capitals, the word xuswEis.†   (source)
  • The competitors appeared to have all the things they didn't: glass syntactic foam, machined metal, elaborate control panels, and cool matching outfits.†   (source)
  • Sometimes even writing down elaborate plans, working up a strategy, using his imagination as a kind of tool to shape the future.†   (source)
  • She lived in a diminutive jewel-box Victorian, Queen Anne style, exuberantly decorated with elaborate millwork.†   (source)
  • The beginnings of warfare are mild at first: a boy being tripped up, or being sandbagged with a flour sack or even being spit on —all with overly elaborate apologies.†   (source)
  • The blond woman at the door hands me a really tall, elaborately iced cake.†   (source)
  • But apparently Cole did not want to elaborate.†   (source)
  • On the third pitch, I went into a long, elaborate windup and sent him a slow, curving blooper, the kind a batter always wants to hit and always misses.†   (source)
  • We were forever biting, we bit hard, we spit and shined each other, we licked each other, we slobbered, we gorged, we made elaborate meals of ourselves, we made holiday feasts Scotch and Korean, the cold strange meal of tongue, of ankle, of toe, we made a mess.†   (source)
  • And she went and sat with Dickie who was still in a faint in the sand, and Lalla, wearing her elaborate bathing suit, held her hand.†   (source)
  • Her response was to nod politely at the perilous elaborateness of it all; to nod in the knowledge that she would never be able to get where she wanted to go.†   (source)
  • He would cook me these elaborate omelets and even put a garnish on the top of them.†   (source)
  • Through the giant peonies, elaborately staked; racing.†   (source)
  • She looked like a high-end hooker, elaborate makeup and black spandex.†   (source)
  • But possibly either of these statements, without elaboration, can lead to an overly clear-cut line of conjecture.†   (source)
  • Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes.†   (source)
  • So an elaborate answer isn't needed.†   (source)
  • Later that afternoon, while Nora and the children were at the pool, he put together an elaborate vegetable lasagna to serve for supper that night.†   (source)
  • Rousseau stood, yawned elaborately, stretched his arms wide, and suggested a walk.†   (source)
  • During the elaborate outdoor service, mixed emotions brought waves of tears to my bewildered eyes.†   (source)
  • I felt that ancient inconsequentiality of being a male as I witnessed the rosy elaboration of her body.†   (source)
  • Karden seemed rather pleased with this, smiling and nodding to himself as he adjusted his spectacles and referred elaborately to his file.†   (source)
  • Either he made up the whole thing, Oedipa thought suddenly, or he bribed the engineer over at the local station to run this, it's all part of a plot, an elaborate, seduction, plot, O Metzger.†   (source)
  • As Kate walked about, the girls became elaborately casual.†   (source)
  • Yama met an elaborate attack with a stop-thrust, his longer blade again drawing blood from his opponent's upper arm.†   (source)
  • The low-cut silk dress she wore had allowed most of one breast to become exposed, causing me such an irresistible hunger to touch it that I did just that, stroking the blue-veined skin at first lightly with my fingertips, then beginning to press and fondle the creamy fullness more elaborately with palm and thumb.†   (source)
  • She wassuperstitious; he loved to tease her with tricks, to stage elaborate charades with the connivance of one of his little boys, that preyed on her fear of ghosts.†   (source)
  • On the minister's tiered dais stood three high-backed chairs, old and dignified, and hanging above the chairs an elaborately ornamented lamp, not burning tonight although it was a symbol, Clumly had somewhere heard, of some kind of everlasting fire.†   (source)
  • In another place a jail would have been a more elaborate thing.†   (source)
  • Meanwhile the car that had actually done the job continued elaborate evasive action towards the Canadian border.†   (source)
  • He was staring at the young men, and they were elaborately ignoring him.†   (source)
  • His father goes on with an elaborately offhand, casual air.†   (source)
  • Today Hannah bought a few of the simplest things for herself and several more elaborate things for her sister-in-law and a beautifully transparent, flowered scarf for Mary's birthday, taking Rufus into this surprise; then, in the art store, she inquired whether the Grammar of Ornament had arrived.†   (source)
  • "His elaborate and ingenious explanation," said the World Herald, is "foolish nonsense ....a silly statement, which has disgusted the people."†   (source)
  • There, Reich hulled and roared past clerks and guards until the mud-streaked blood-smeared figure burst into Commissioner Crabbe's elaborate ebony and silver office.†   (source)
  • The men stepped out in evening clothes and the women stepped out after them, their hair coiffed up in elaborate detail.†   (source)
  • His bathroom door was cracked open, and I could see a porcelain tub on the elaborately tiled floor.†   (source)
  • And on the dais was a chair elaborately carved from white wood.†   (source)
  • But I worried it might seem like the desperate elaboration of a child caught in a lie.†   (source)
  • The right's only task was to advise the military in the elaboration of new edicts and new laws.†   (source)
  • A few, I can tell by the elaborateness of the smile he composes and aims.†   (source)
  • No dragon chair can replace a dragon no matter how elaborately it carved.†   (source)
  • Three thick walls encircled Qarth, elaborately carved.†   (source)
  • The handle was black dragonbone, elaborately carved and inlaid with gold.†   (source)
  • It is an elaboration of the instinct to survive.†   (source)
  • They were all made of leather, elaborately decorated and stitched.†   (source)
  • It was a dress—a slip, really—jet-black, with elaborately beaded straps and a lace hem.†   (source)
  • Mother's further elaboration only confused me more.†   (source)
  • 'A friend's,' said Staples without further elaboration.†   (source)
  • Billy finally managed to get his news in edgewise during my continuing elaborations.†   (source)
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