complication - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

a wristwatch with multiple complications (sense 5)

Borrowed from Middle French complication, from Latin complicatio, complicationem. Morphologically complicate +‎ -ion.

complication (countable and uncountable, plural complications)

  1. The act or process of complicating.
  2. The state of being complicated; intricate or confused relation of parts; complexity.
  3. A person who doesn't fit in with the main scheme of things; an interloper.
  4. (medicine) A disease or diseases, or adventitious circumstances or conditions, coexistent with and modifying a primary disease, but not necessarily connected with it.
    Coordinate terms: sequela, comorbidity
  5. (horology) A feature beyond basic time display in a timepiece.
    Hypernym: bells and whistles
    • 2013, Stacy Perman, A Grand Complication: The Race to Build the World's Most Legendary Watch, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 35:
      Obsessed, he was after a watch that contained the greatest number of complications in the boldest combinations in the smallest space imaginable.
    • 2023 May 28, Brian Ng, “Is one of these students the next Breguet?”, in HTSI, London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 43:
      In their final year, each student must make their own watch with a complication—from a tourbillon to a chiming mode to having a date display.
  6. (obsolete) A twisting or intertwining.
    • 1646, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica:
      the snaky complication in the Caduceus or rod of Hermes.

act of complicating

the state of being complicated

(medicine)

feature beyond basic time display

Learned borrowing from Latin complicātiō. By surface analysis, compliquer +‎ -ation.

complication f (plural complications)

  1. complication

From Spanish complicación, English complication, French complication, Portuguese complicação and Italian complicazione, all from Latin complicātiō. By surface analysis, complicar +‎ -ion.

complication (plural complicationes)

  1. complication (all senses)