Sophisticated

adj, verb

adj, verb ·5 syllables ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    simple past and past participle of sophisticate form-of, participle, past
Adjective
  1. 1
    Of a person: having obtained worldly experience, and lacking naiveté; cosmopolitan, worldly-wise.

    "Set against the background of the American civil war, with Keaton a cunning but unskilled driver, unaided, of the ponderous giant of a locomotive, it remains not only probably the funniest film about railways ever made, but one of the funniest silent films to retain its comic power over today's more sophisticated audiences."

  2. 2
    Of art or other things: appealing to the tastes of an intellectual or sophisticated (sense 1) person; cerebral; also, cultured, elegant, refined.
  3. 3
    Complicated, especially of complex technology.

    "The much more sophisticated and personable chatbots of today are the “Eliza effect on steroids,” [Sherry] Turkle said."

  4. 4
    Mixed with a foreign or inferior substance; not genuine or pure; unrefined, adulterated, impure. obsolete
  5. 5
    Of a thing: having its meaning changed in a deceptive or misleading way. obsolete
Adjective
  1. 1
    ahead in development; complex or intricate wordnet
  2. 2
    intellectually appealing wordnet
  3. 3
    having or appealing to those having worldly knowledge and refinement and savoir-faire wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
cosmopolitanrefinedurbaneworldlysophisticateadult

Example

More examples

"The engineer demonstrated how to operate the sophisticated system."

Etymology

First English usage circa 1601. From Medieval Latin sophisticatus.

Related phrases

pseudo-sophisticatedsophisticated falsificationism

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.