Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Having acquired worldly knowledge or refinement; lacking natural simplicity or naiveté.
- adj. Very complex or complicated: the latest and most sophisticated technology.
- adj. Suitable for or appealing to the tastes of sophisticates: a sophisticated drama.
Wiktionary
- adj. Having obtained worldly experience, and lacking naiveté; cosmopolitan.
- adj. Elegant, refined.
- adj. Complicated, especially of complex technology.
- adj. Appealing to the tastes of an intellectual; cerebral.
- adj. obsolete, UK Dishonest or misleading.
- v. Simple past tense and past participle of sophisticate.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. ahead in development; complex or intricate
- adj. having or appealing to those having worldly knowledge and refinement and savoir-faire
- adj. intellectually appealing
Etymologies
- First English usage circa 1601. Medieval Latin sophisticatus. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“They gutted the house in order to create what they describe as a sophisticated cottage with a European feeling.”
“Now that's what I call sophisticated argumentation!”
“The Spruce Pine-related losses follow North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper's June uncovering of what he described as a sophisticated real estate fraud involving a planned community, the Village of Penland, in the western part of the state.”
“He talked ant what he called the sophisticated design.”
“It started here, absolutely," said Sir Brian Urquhart, a nonagenarian former under secretary general, recalling the birth of what he described as a sophisticated if entangled plan.”
“Mr. Tobok could not say for sure that the attacks, which he described as sophisticated, and which appeared to originate from Chinese computers, were in fact sanctioned by China's government.”
“We had a good moan at the supplier and the problem seems to have gone away ... now that's what you call sophisticated quality control Interested in this topic?”
“Google's new stance on China was triggered by what it described as a sophisticated computer attack orchestrated from within the country.”
“Google threatened this week to pull out of China after what it called a sophisticated hacking attack believed to be aimed at human rights activists.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘sophisticated’.
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probablyankita's list
Words are all I have to take your heart away
apartheid, techno-klutz, logorrheic, gordian knot, anodyne, odor of sanctity, finders keepers, foot-in-mouth dis..., dutch uncle, masquerade, smoke signals, furtive glance and 320 more...
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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bbc uk china vocab.
conservationists, estimate, threats, infertility, eating away at, endangered, furry, panel, in trouble, gongs, triumphed, caps and 1007 more...
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EN - newSPEAK
Buzzwords of our time
actionable, administrivia, advermation, agreeance, backbone provider, back-sourcing, baked in, bandwidth, barn raising, Barneyware, belly-buttons, Below Zeros and 1078 more...
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It's Complicated
Words about complication, complexity.
nookshotten, finicky, challenging, intricate, complex, complication, involved, elaborate, labyrinthine, involute, sophisticated, tangled and 21 more...
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Shopping From Home (For Words)
The list begins with evocative words I found in a Bed Bath & Beyond catalog, but other words in a similar vein are welcome, with two simple rules: they must come out of catalogs, and they can't...
sconce, mercer, urn, crock, pique, taffeta, chenille, ensemble, crescent, flocked, stockpot, microfiber and 40 more...
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five syllables
ontogenesis, phylogenesis, concatenation, androgenesis, extra textual, inexorably, spagyrically, apophenia, iatrochemist, monocotyloid, morphological, parthenogenic and 998 more...
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Twitter favorites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favorite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
unfathomably, glice, cuh, fab, ciggaty, doll, thuggin, oxymoronic, pineapple, succubutt, griming, cheeky and 3027 more... -
The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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africasunsets's list
serendipity, fragrance, glamour, smitten, nourish, lavish, luxury, wicked, gem, daring, soothe, fantasy and 192 more...
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Rare Books
Words used in the rare book trade (of which I was once a part). For more about how such books are put together, see hernesheir's excellent The Bindery.
foxing, gilt, headband, bumped, endpaper, leaf, colophon, vellum, laid paper, boards, device, engraving and 168 more...
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Words from "Pearls Before Breakfast"
nondescript, shrewd, seed money, bureaucrat, indeterminate, fungible, cupidity, banal, grandeur, utilitarian, buffer, ecstatic and 123 more...
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Basic English Vocabulary
Very basic words for ESL students.
a, abandon, ability, able, abortion, about, above, abroad, absence, absolute, absolutely, absorb and 4334 more...
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cloudjuice's Words
schadenfreude, sordid, promulgate, erratic, erroneous, amalgamate, sesquipedalian, incongruous, psychosis, etymology, simulacrum, serendipity and 988 more...
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GPaX. Words.
excogitate, clarity, obscurity, tangential, interesting, regurgitate, mycelium, degradation, unladen, swallow, klein, quote and 120 more...
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theinfonaut's Words
pithy, voraciousness, aphorism, crumple, flaneur, coquettish, grace, discriminating, oscillation, assumption, nasturtium, petiole and 90 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for sophisticated.
reesetee Blahaha! Thanks! Jul 15, 2009
chained_bear The Sophisticated Song. (if at work, use headphones) Jul 15, 2009
reesetee In rare and antique books, this refers to a volume on which repairs have been made that involve additions to the original--for example, missing chips of paper are filled in and colored to match the missing portion, or page corners are replaced with new paper. Feb 22, 2007