All 3 Uses of

elaborate
in
Middlemarch

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.†
Chpt 2 *

elaborator = someone who adds details or explains in detail

On this ground they were both in their hearts equally averse to Mr. Bulstrode, though Dr. Minchin had never been in open hostility with him, and never differed from him without elaborate explanation to Mrs. Bulstrode, who had found that Dr. Minchin alone understood her constitution.†
Chpt 2

But Mr. Casaubon's theory of the elements which made the seed of all tradition was not likely to bruise itself unawares against discoveries: it floated among flexible conjectures no more solid than those etymologies which seemed strong because of likeness in sound until it was shown that likeness in sound made them impossible: it was a method of interpretation which was not tested by the necessity of forming anything which had sharper collisions than an elaborate notion of Gog and Magog: it was as free from interruption as a plan for threading the stars together.†
Chpt 5

Definitions:

(1) (elaborate as in: elaborate on your plan)
add details or explain in detail
(2) (elaborate as in: an elaborate design)
having details and complexity -- sometimes fancy or ornate
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
or:
- more complicated than necessary in a bad way
(3) (elaborate as in: an elaborate wink)
to exaggerate an action

At times, this sense of elaborate can further imply that an action was exaggerated by prolonging it (performing it more slowly than normal).
(4) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
meaning too rare to warrant focus