complex
Made of many parts, and hard to understand or work out.
- The model castle had a complex design with secret passages and towers.
- The puzzle was complex, so we worked on it together.
Similar: complicated, difficult, tricky
complex or intricate?
Complex is about being hard to work out. Intricate is about lots of small, fine detail.
Both words describe something with many parts, so children swap them freely. The difference is whether the parts make it difficult to understand or simply beautiful and detailed to look at.
Complex points at difficulty. The rules of a new board game can be complex, and so can a long maths problem with lots of steps. The challenge is working out how all the pieces fit together.
Intricate points at detail. A snowflake has an intricate pattern, and so does a hand-knitted jumper with a design of reindeer across the front. You can understand an intricate pattern at a glance; what makes it intricate is how many tiny parts went into it. Writers do sometimes call a plan or a plot intricate, but the fine detail is still the heart of the word.
Both words, side by side
intricate
Having many small parts or details.
- The intricate lock had dozens of tiny cogs and hidden switches.
- The spider spun an intricate web with hundreds of fine, perfectly spaced threads.
Similar: complex, detailed, fancy
Why it costs marks
In a closest-meaning question, complex usually matches complicated, while intricate matches detailed or elaborate. Choosing between those options is much easier when a child knows which idea each word is really carrying.
Definitions and example sentences on this page are the ones a child sees inside Wordrealm, taken from our list of over 1,100 words. It is free to browse, with nothing to sign up for.
Sitting the 11+ in Kent, Medway or Buckinghamshire?
Plain-English guides to each test, from the councils’ own pages: Kent Test · Medway Test · Bucks Secondary Transfer Test