From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Intricate \In"tri*cate\, adjective [L. intricatus, p. p. of intricare to entangle, perplex. Cf. {Intrigue}, {Extricate}.] Entangled; involved; perplexed; complicated; difficult to understand, follow, arrange, or adjust; as, intricate machinery, labyrinths, accounts, plots, etc.
His style was fit to convey the most intricate business to the understanding with the utmost clearness. --Addison.
The nature of man is intricate. --Burke.
Syn: {Intricate}, {Complex}, {Complicated}.
Usage: A thing is complex when it is made up of parts; it is complicated when those parts are so many, or so arranged, as to make it difficult to grasp them; it is intricate when it has numerous windings and confused involutions which it is hard to follow out. What is complex must be resolved into its parts; what is complicated must be drawn out and developed; what is intricate must be unraveled.
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Intricate \In"tri*cate\, verb (used with an object) To entangle; to involve; to make perplexing. [Obs.]
It makes men troublesome, and intricates all wise discourses. --Jer. Taylor.
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
intricate
adjective: highly involved or intricate; "the Byzantine tax structure"; "convoluted legal language"; "convoluted reasoning"; "intricate needlework"; "an intricate labyrinth of refined phraseology"; "the plot was too involved"; "a knotty problem"; "got his way by labyrinthine maneuvering"; "Oh, what a tangled web we weave"- Sir Walter Scott; "tortuous legal procedures"; "tortuous negotiations lasting for months" [syn: {Byzantine}, {convoluted}, {involved}, {knotty}, {labyrinthine}, {tangled}, {tortuous}]
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
148 Moby Thesaurus words for "intricate": Byzantine, Daedalian, Herculean, abstruse, amalgamated, ambiguous, ambivalent, amphibious, anfractuous, arduous, baffling, balled up, bewildering, beyond one, blended, bothering, brutal, combined, complex, complicated, composite, compound, compounded, confounded, confounding, confused, confusing, conglomerate, convoluted, crabbed, cramp, critical, daedal, dappled, dedal, delicate, demanding, devious, difficile, difficult, discomposing, disconcerting, dismaying, distracting, disturbing, eclectic, elaborate, embarrassing, embrangled, enigmatic, entangled, equivocal, exacting, fancy, fifty-fifty, formidable, fouled up, garbled, gordian, hairy, half-and-half, hard, hard to understand, hard-earned, hard-fought, heterogeneous, implicated, indiscriminate, involuted, involved, ironic, jawbreaking, jumbled, knotted, knotty, laborious, labyrinthian, labyrinthine, loused up, many-faceted, many-sided, matted, mazy, mean, meandering, medley, messed up, mingled, miscellaneous, mixed, mixed up, motley, mucked up, multifaceted, multifarious, multinational, multiracial, mysterious, mystifying, no picnic, not easy, obfuscated, obscure, obscured, operose, ornate, overtechnical, patchy, perplexed, perplexing, perturbing, pluralistic, problematic, promiscuous, puzzling, ramified, rigorous, rococo, rough, roundabout, rugged, scrambled, screwed up, set with thorns, severe, sinuous, snarled, sophisticated, spiny, steep, strenuous, subtle, syncretic, tangled, tangly, thorny, thrown together, ticklish, toilsome, tortuous, tough, tricky, twisted, uphill, upsetting, varied, wicked, winding
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