Kilo Lingo

Line drawing of kompleksa
Coloured illustration of kompleksa
#2224 of 5,000 Core 5000

Translation

complex; made up of many parts

Word origin

From Latin complexus, the past participle of complecti, 'to embrace, to encircle', built from com- ('together') and plectere ('to plait'). What is complex is what has been plaited together out of strands.

Origin
Latin
Root
complexus
English cognates
complex, complexion, perplex

Examples

.

The human body is a complex system of many parts.

.

Their plan was complex but not at all difficult.

.

Every big city is a complex thing.

The fence with komplika is worth building properly, because English lets the two words blur and Esperanto does not. is about composition: the thing is made of many parts that hang together. is about difficulty of untangling: the thing is a knot. A cathedral is - thousands of pieces in a real structure - and it is not at all, because you can see what everything is for. A badly written form is and not : two boxes and no idea which one to tick.

So the answer to "which one?" is: ask what you are complaining about. If you are describing how much is in there, . If you are complaining that you cannot follow it, . PIV keeps them apart on exactly this line, and Esperantists in practice do too, which is one of the small places where the language is sharper than English.

The noun is komplekso, a complex in the sense of a set of connected things - a building complex, and also the psychological sense that Freud's translators fixed in every European language at once. has no relation whatever to komplezi (to oblige someone), despite the letters.

Where this fits

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Esperanto · Free printables

kompleksa: worksheet, infographic and listicle

Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "kompleksa" (complex; made up of many parts): a worksheet with the answer key built in, an infographic, and a sentence listicle. Open any one to view, print or save.

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This word is part of lesson 45.