Making something more difficult, confusing, or complex than it was before.
From Latin 'complicare' (to fold together), where 'com-' means together and 'plicare' means to fold. The idea is that when you fold things together, they become tangled and hard to separate.
The original meaning of 'complicate' was literally about FOLDING things together—from that physical image, the word evolved to mean making anything 'tangled' or 'hard to unravel,' which is why a complicated math problem feels like a knotted rope!
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