Skip to main content
All words

verb

explicate

to analyze and develop an idea or principle in detail

In a sentence

Six example sentences with explicate, each labelled with its topic.

  • Her seminar spends a whole term explicating four pages of Spinoza, sentence by sentence, until the argument stands clear.

    Philosophy

  • The paper explicates why small rewards can undo the motivation they were meant to strengthen, tracing forty years of experiments.

    Psychology

  • Before anyone could test it, Maxwell had to explicate the field concept in equations that few physicists then understood.

    Science

  • The critic explicates a single stanza across thirty pages, weighing every comma and line break for hidden meaning.

    Literature

  • The opinion explicates the doctrine of fair use in detail, tracing it from a nineteenth century case to streaming.

    Law

  • Her lecture explicates comparative advantage step by step, using two farmers, two crops, and a great deal of chalk.

    Economics

Study explicate until you keep it

Sign up freeOr start learning, no sign-up →

Learn English words in sentences about topics you pick, with a quick quiz. With an account, words come back for review.

Found in these word lists

Found in 3 published word listsRecognized

Each source is a published word list that contains explicate. No exam board publishes an official GRE, GMAT or SAT list; GMAT words come from GRE lists and the Academic Word List.

More Literary words