EXPLAIN • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Explain

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/ɪksplˈeɪn/ Listen

verb

Explain v. t. (past & past part. explained; pres. part. explaining)

To flatten; to spread out; to unfold; to expand. (Obs.) "The horse-chestnut is... ready to explain its leaf."

To make plain, manifest, or intelligible; to clear of obscurity; to expound; to unfold and illustrate the meaning of; as, to explain a chapter of the Bible. "Commentators to explain the difficult passages to you."

To explain away, to get rid of by explanation. "Those explain the meaning quite away."

Synonyms: To expound; interpret; elucidate; clear up.

Explain v. i. To give an explanation.

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Etymology of 'Explain'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Explain" Quotes from Famous Books

... Commandant, you will probably apologise to this noble gentleman for your treatment of him, and permit us to return to our former apartments. I will there explain to you this most strange and ...

— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat

... oh, so happily, that big portier wouldn't let us out—he was sorry, but he must obey orders—we must go back up stairs and wait. Poor Livy—I couldn't help but enjoy her distress. She said we were in a fix, and how were we going to explain, if the princess should arrive before the rightful Americans came? We went up stairs again—laid off our wraps, and were conducted through one drawing room and into another, and left alone there and the door ...

— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... loophole for lots of our lessons," remarked Raymonde hopefully, as she personally conducted a party of new arrivals over the establishment. "For instance, if I get muddled over circulating decimals, I'll explain that my brains fall naturally into a mediaeval groove in these surroundings, and decimals weren't invented then, so that of course it's impossible for me to grasp them; and the same with geography—the map of Africa then had about three names ...

— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... which was believed essential to the completion of the great work on which the grandeur and happiness of America was supposed to depend. "We can not," said Mr. Johnson, a gentleman of great political eminence in Maryland, "do without you, and I, and thousands more can explain to any body but yourself, why we can not do without you." "I have ever thought," said Mr. Gouverneur Morris, a gentleman who had been among the most valuable members of congress through great part of the war, and who had performed a most splendid part in the ...

— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

... and Allan were usually called upon to explain the thousand and one things connected with woods life, as yet sealed mysteries to those of the patrol who were experiencing ...

— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter

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