Dictionary

complexification en · NOUN

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *ḱe? Proto-Indo-European *ḱóm Proto-Italic *kom Proto-Italic *kom- Latin con- Proto-Indo-European *pel- Proto-Indo-European *pleḱ-der. Proto-Italic *plektōder. Latin plectō Latin complector Proto-Indo-European *-tus Proto-Italic *-tus Latin -tus Latin complexuslbor. French complexebor. English complex Proto-Indo-European *-tis Proto-Indo-European *-Hō Proto-Indo-European *-tiHō Proto-Italic *-tiō Latin -ficātiō Old French -ificationbor. Middle English -ificacioun English -ification English complexification From complex + -ification.

Meanings

1. (uncountable, usually) The act or process of making something more complex.
   • For rational beings will of course try simple things first and thereafter be driven step by step towards an ever enhanced complexification 1998, Nicholas Rescher, Complexity: A Philosophical Overview, page 56:
   • In Elise Boulding's analysis, the conservative qualities of woman's mysteries chose not to keep pace with the complexification of urban life. 1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 154:
   • A new complexification occurs when the situation becomes desperate through crashing marginal returns on increasing complicatedness. 2002, Charles J. Kibert, Jan Sendzimir, and G. Bradley Guy (editors), Timothy F.H. Allen, Construction Ecology, Nature as the basis for green buildings, page 114, Taylor & Francis, page 114
   • All this represents a change in American society, and a complexification of it. 1918, Hartley Burr Alexander, Liberty and democracy: and other essays in war-time, page 161:
   • The development of protolanguage into modern human language, and the complexification of language more generally, can only occur when language users can successfully communicate even while they maintain different internal representations of language. 2006 April, Andrew D. M. Smith, “Semantic reconstructibility and the complexification of language”, in The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference (EVOLANG6), World Scientific, →ISBN, page 307:
   • This fundamental discovery that all bodies owe their origin to arrangements of single initial corpuscular type is the beacon that lights the history of the universe to our eyes. In its own way, matter obeyed from the beginning that great law of biology to which we shall have to recur time and time again, the law of 'complexification'. 1955, Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, page 48:
2. (countable, usually) An extension from a basis on real numbers to a basis on complex numbers.

Forms

Antonyms

decomplexification · simplification

Relateds

complexify · complexifying · complex · complexity · complexified · decomplexified · decomplexifying · decomplexify · decomplexification