explain
VerbOpen English WordNet
Verb (3)explains, explained, explaining
- make plain and comprehensible“He explained the laws of physics to his students”Synonyms: explicateMore general informMore specific rede, clarify, account for, shine, comment, naturalize
- define“The committee explained their plan for fund-raising to the Dean”More general state, say
- serve as a reason or cause or justification of“Your need to sleep late does not excuse your late arrival at work”“Her recent divorce may explain her reluctance to date again”Synonyms: excuseMore general justify, vindicateMore specific account for, alibi
What does it mean? Question 1 of today’s quiz
Translations
Verb to make intelligible
- Spanish
- explicar
- French
- expliquer
- German
- erläutern
- Italian
- spiegare
- Portuguese
- explicar
- Turkish
- açıklamak
- Russian
- объясни́ть obʺjasnítʹ
- Arabic
- شَرَحَ šaraḥa
- Chinese
- 解释 jiěshì
- Japanese
- 説明する setsumei suru
28 more languages
- Dutch
- uitleggen
- Polish
- wyjaśniać
- Swedish
- förklara
- Greek
- εξηγώ exigó
- Korean
- 설명하다 seolmyeonghada
- Indonesian
- menjelaskan
- Vietnamese
- giải thích
- Hungarian
- megmagyaráz
- Portuguese (PT)
- explicar
- Chinese (Trad.)
- 說明 shuōmíng
- Albanian
- shpjegoj
- Catalan
- explicar
- Czech
- vysvětlit
- Danish
- forklare
- Esperanto
- klarigi
- Estonian
- seletama
- Finnish
- selittää
- Hebrew
- הִסְבִּיר hisbír
- Icelandic
- útskýra
- Kurdish
- vegotin
- Latvian
- skaidrot
- Lithuanian
- aiškinti
- Norwegian
- forklare
- Romanian
- explica
- Serbo-Croatian
- objasniti
- Slovenian
- pojasniti
- Welsh
- egluro
- Yiddish
- דערקלערן derklern
Verb to excuse, account for
The main translation for each meaning, from the langtolang.com multilingual dictionary. Each word links to its full entry there.
Webster's Dictionary (1913)
Origin: L. explandare to flatten, spread out, explain; ex out + plandare to make level or plain, planus plain: cf. OF. esplaner, explaner. See Plain,adjective, and cf. Esplanade.
1. To flatten; to spread out; to unfold; to expand. obsolete
The horse-chestnut is... ready to explain its leaf.— John Evelyn
2. 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.— John Gay
To explain away, to get rid of by explanation. “Those explain the meaning quite away.” Alexander Pope
Synonyms: To expound; interpret; elucidate; clear up.
To give an explanation.
Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913), from GCIDE 0.54