1. having many complexly arranged elements; elaborate;
- Example: "intricate lacework"
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:
Intricate \In"tri*cate\, a. [L. intricatus, p. p. of intricare to entangle, perplex. Cf. Intrigue, Extricate.] Entangled; involved; perplexed; complicated; difficult to understand, follow, arrange, or adjust; as, intricate machinery, labyrinths, accounts, plots, etc. [1913 Webster] His style was fit to convey the most intricate business to the understanding with the utmost clearness. --Addison. [1913 Webster] The nature of man is intricate. --Burke. Syn: Intricate, Complex, Complicated. Usage: A thing is complex when it is made up of parts; it is complicated when those parts are so many, or so arranged, as to make it difficult to grasp them; it is intricate when it has numerous windings and confused involutions which it is hard to follow out. What is complex must be resolved into its parts; what is complicated must be drawn out and developed; what is intricate must be unraveled. [1913 Webster]The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:
Intricate \In"tri*cate\, v. t. To entangle; to involve; to make perplexing. [Obs.] [1913 Webster] It makes men troublesome, and intricates all wise discourses. --Jer. Taylor. [1913 Webster]Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0:
148 Moby Thesaurus words for "intricate": Byzantine, Daedalian, Herculean, abstruse, amalgamated, ambiguous, ambivalent, amphibious, anfractuous, arduous, baffling, balled up, bewildering, beyond one, blended, bothering, brutal, combined, complex, complicated, composite, compound, compounded, confounded, confounding, confused, confusing, conglomerate, convoluted, crabbed, cramp, critical, daedal, dappled, dedal, delicate, demanding, devious, difficile, difficult, discomposing, disconcerting, dismaying, distracting, disturbing, eclectic, elaborate, embarrassing, embrangled, enigmatic, entangled, equivocal, exacting, fancy, fifty-fifty, formidable, fouled up, garbled, gordian, hairy, half-and-half, hard, hard to understand, hard-earned, hard-fought, heterogeneous, implicated, indiscriminate, involuted, involved, ironic, jawbreaking, jumbled, knotted, knotty, laborious, labyrinthian, labyrinthine, loused up, many-faceted, many-sided, matted, mazy, mean, meandering, medley, messed up, mingled, miscellaneous, mixed, mixed up, motley, mucked up, multifaceted, multifarious, multinational, multiracial, mysterious, mystifying, no picnic, not easy, obfuscated, obscure, obscured, operose, ornate, overtechnical, patchy, perplexed, perplexing, perturbing, pluralistic, problematic, promiscuous, puzzling, ramified, rigorous, rococo, rough, roundabout, rugged, scrambled, screwed up, set with thorns, severe, sinuous, snarled, sophisticated, spiny, steep, strenuous, subtle, syncretic, tangled, tangly, thorny, thrown together, ticklish, toilsome, tortuous, tough, tricky, twisted, uphill, upsetting, varied, wicked, winding