1. Word finder
  2. Word definitions
  3. complexity

Find the word definition

What is "complexity"

Crossword clues for complexity

complexity
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
complexity
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
considerable
▪ In response to these needs a calendrical system of considerable complexity was devised.
▪ Unfortunately, the area is one of considerable complexity.
▪ This was a task of considerable complexity and Tozer's edition remains the standard one.
▪ The dragonflies beat their two wings synchronously, but this makes for very considerable physiological complexities.
▪ It can be of considerable depth and complexity and should not be devalued.
▪ One requires a background of considerable behavioural complexity before one is justified in attributing to any creature beliefs, intentions and so on.
full
▪ It is impossible, in a short space, to full convey the complexities of international diplomacy throughout these years.
▪ The result is that there isn't really a model which describes filmmaking in its full complexity.
great
▪ This astonishing diversity manifested itself in great complexity of relationships and in our lacking dominance almost everywhere.
▪ But her narrative acquires its greatest complexity and most ironic shadings when dealing with these violent events.
▪ Obviously this is not a realistic assumption. further, the greater the inter-dependence, then the greater the complexity.
▪ As a system re-organizes into greater complexity, it increases its life.
▪ Discussion of this would lead us into great complexity and it is appropriate to give a largely phenomenological description.
▪ The greater the complexity of a vivisystem, the more life it may harbor.
▪ The methods available are constantly increasing in number and their utility is greater as the complexity of contemporary processes is revealed.
▪ For rather similar reasons, Darwin reacted against Lamarck's idea that organisms have an inner drive to evolve greater complexity.
growing
▪ The number of departments within each major foreign ministry grew with the growing complexity of the work to be done.
▪ These changes are paralleled by a growing economic complexity.
▪ The third has been the provision of an ever-increasing variety of financial instruments needed to support the growing complexity of cross-border transactions.
▪ The market is one of growing complexity, dynamism and openness.
▪ This division of labour was itself the product of the growing complexity of the social organism.
increasing
▪ To adapt to the increasing complexities of modern business life, an organisation can not afford to be a sluggish bureaucracy.
▪ The increasing complexity of matter forms a series of components of increasing organization as illustrated in Figure 5.
▪ The second was the increasing complexity of the legal issues arising in appeals.
▪ The increasing complexity of trade and commerce demands financial and legal experts such as accountants and lawyers.
technical
▪ This legal and political advantage is balanced by the higher order of technical complexity involved in exploiting sulphide ores.
▪ Numerous surveys show how poorly equipped students are to enter a work force that faces increasing technical complexity and intensifying competition.
▪ Considering the technical complexities required, televised science fiction has frequently earned less than proportionately balanced critical response.
▪ The 15 players triumph in the technical complexities of the five etudes.
▪ But perhaps the biggest challenge and one that receives little attention is the enormous technical complexity of the Internet.
▪ Consultants' caseloads are mounting inexorably and technical complexity is increasing while junior support declines, both proportionately and in terms of doctor hours.
▪ All businesses were examined except those where the technical complexity was too great to be understood by central corporate staff.
■ VERB
add
▪ However, as land use patterns change over time, zone boundaries will need changing, adding to the procedural complexity.
▪ To Jefferson, it was Paul who started adding complexity.
▪ Unfortunately, that process committee overlay adds even more complexity to organizational relationships that are already too complex.
▪ They can either be shaved atop a sauce or studded in it to add complexity and fragrance.
▪ Herbs, when used judiciously, add dimension and complexity to game of all kinds.
cope
▪ How do they cope with the complexity of the problem?
▪ At the same time, coping with the complexity of cultural rules presents a real challenge.
▪ We are forced to conclude that our present knowledge is too limited to cope with these complexities.
▪ They were also too crude to cope with the complexity of contemporary life in Britain.
▪ The highest professional standards are needed to cope with the complexity of issues.
▪ They Simply would not have the flexibility or the speed of reaction to cope with the complexities of everyday life.
▪ Piphros' vocabulary was indeed limited and was unable to cope with the complexity of some of the things she had asked.
explain
▪ The package explains the complexities of serial communications using on screen tutorials with animated sections.
▪ To many biologists, it provides the key to explaining the complexities of animal life.
grow
▪ The number of departments within each major foreign ministry grew with the growing complexity of the work to be done.
▪ While the issues surrounding home banking appear to be growing in complexity, so are the opportunities and challenges for bankers.
▪ They grew in numbers and complexity.
▪ Their writing, with some exceptions, had also grown in ease and complexity.
▪ And the simple point grows its own complexity.
▪ Five is a rich document, a multi-faceted celebration of musicianship that grows in complexity with every listen.
▪ Memory requirements for the computer leapt as the amount of data and programs grew in complexity.
illustrate
▪ A simple example should serve to illustrate the complexities and the paradoxes of this conflict.
▪ Janet illustrates the complexity of moving between two worlds.
▪ Nevertheless they do illustrate the complexities of local ecclesiastical politics.
▪ Perhaps the main value is in illustrating the complexity of cause and effect.
▪ The main purpose of the list is to illustrate complexity and variety of political-economic and physical circumstances of soil erosion.
increase
▪ It substantially increases the complexity of the environment of the animal.
▪ Numerous surveys show how poorly equipped students are to enter a work force that faces increasing technical complexity and intensifying competition.
▪ It may well be that one consequence of increasing complexity will be a return to standard units.
▪ In fact, there were disincentives for improvement since rewards to support function managers came for increased size and complexity.
▪ This series includes nine modules of increasing complexity.
▪ Second, communal work has increased in complexity.
▪ What characterises ascending stages of the scale of being is the combination of unity with ever increasing degrees of complexity.
▪ The increasing complexity of construction projects also should lead to the creation of more manager jobs.
involve
▪ These activities are performed to solve problems involving complexity, uncertainty and/or ambiguity that require intelligence and decision-making.
▪ Problems may involve complexity, criticality, conflict or indeed a combination of these problem types.
▪ It is also simple-minded to assert that everyone can or should be involved in the complexities of designing universities or opera houses.
reduce
▪ Tivoli's aim is to reduce the cost and complexity of managing heterogeneous distributed environments which include Unix systems and personal computers.
▪ The new process also reduces cost and complexity.
▪ It reduces the complexity of the world by seeking out those qualities that countries share and those that they do not share.
▪ Codifying these transactions and coordinating them through software via the I-way can reduce the complexity of the task.
▪ Pattern is created out of initial, seemingly random, information so reducing its complexity.
reveal
▪ Detailed three-dimensional structural analysis of church buildings is helping to reveal great complexity in their development.
▪ The tablets reveal the Minoans as lovers of minutely recorded detail; their labyrinthine architecture reveals a love of complexity and puzzles.
▪ He may be surprised when the analyst reveals the complexities of his hand movements and finger manipulations.
understand
▪ When we deal with constituents at our surgeries we have difficulty understanding the complexities.
▪ This study repays careful reading to understand more of the complexity of domestic care.
▪ Meanwhile the borderline case is important in understanding the complexity of primary signal systems.
▪ Conceiving citizenship is this manner allows for a clearer understanding of the complexities of contemporary forms of social inclusion and exclusion.
▪ His approach has undoubtedly helped a lot of people to understand the complexities of biological evolution.
▪ The skyscraper metaphor is apt, for our only hope to understanding such complexity is with a hierarchical model.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Many people struggle with the complexity of the tax forms.
▪ The article attempts to explain the affair's legal and political complexities.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ But as James' tale develops, it assumes complexity.
▪ First, Temple confronted the life of the real world in all its complexity.
▪ How to choose the right model complexity is explained in these chapters.
▪ Now he was getting a lesson in the complexities of human relationships.
▪ The public mood seemed to be that more organizations mean more bureaucracy, complexity and expense.
▪ These are the questions pursued by complexity science.
▪ This is a universal law of vivisystems: higher level complexities can not be inferred by lower-level existences.
▪ Watson, I am accustomed to being baffled by complexity.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Complexity

Complexity \Com*plex"i*ty\, n.; pl. Complexities. [Cf. F. complexit['e].]

  1. The state of being complex; intricacy; entanglement.

    The objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity.
    --Burke.

  2. That which is complex; intricacy; complication.

    Many-corridored complexities Of Arthur's palace.
    --Tennyson.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
complexity

1721, "composite nature," from complex (adj.) + -ity. Meaning "intricacy" is from 1790. Meaning "a complex condition" is from 1794.

Wiktionary
complexity

n. 1 (context uncountable English) The state of being complex; intricacy; entanglement. 2 (context countable English) That which is and renders complex; intricacy; complication.

Related phrases:
WordNet
complexity

n. the quality of being intricate and compounded; "he enjoyed the complexity of modern computers" [syn: complexness] [ant: simplicity]

Wikipedia
Complexity

Complexity describes the behaviour of a system or model whose components interact in multiple ways and follow local rules, meaning there is no reasonable higher instruction to define the various possible interactions.

Complexity is generally used to characterize something with many parts where those parts interact with each other in multiple ways, culminating in a higher order of emergence greater than the sum of its parts. There is no absolute definition of what complexity means; the only consensus among researchers is that there is no agreement about the specific definition of complexity. However, a characterization of what is complex is possible. The study of these complex linkages at various scales is the main goal of complex systems theory.

In science, there are a number of approaches to characterizing complexity; this article reflects many of these. Neil Johnson states that "even among scientists, there is no unique definition of complexity – and the scientific notion has traditionally been conveyed using particular examples..." Ultimately he adopts the definition of 'complexity science' as "the study of the phenomena which emerge from a collection of interacting objects."

Complexity (disambiguation)

Complexity, in general usage, tends to be used to characterize something with many parts in intricate arrangement.

Complexity may also refer to:

  • Complex systems
  • Time complexity
Mathematics and computing
  • Computational complexity theory, in computer science
  • Computational complexity of mathematical operations
  • Kolmogorov complexity
Complexity (journal)

Complexity is a bimonthly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering the field of complex adaptive systems. The journal's scope includes Chaos theory, genetic algorithms, cellular automata, neural networks, evolutionary game theory, and econophysics.

Related phrases:

Usage examples of "complexity".

Outside, in the warehouse of time, the adaptor I look for must bridge the paradoxical equivalence of message and notch, caprice and complexity, theme and variation.

Formally, he was replying to the ideal of clear and harmonious beauty in the Tolstoy epic by affirming the possibility of a new aesthetics which could express modern chaos and complexity.

Fifth Level of Complexity as far beyond intelligence as intelligence is from amoebic life, or life from inert matter.

The methods of science, or at least biological science, they would maintain, cannot provide understanding of the mind, either because the mind is fundamentally inaccessible to materialist investigation or because our techniques, while they may be applicable to understanding animal brains and behaviour, fail when confronted with the complexities of human thought, speech and social existence.

At fifty-two, Bandar, a close confidant of both Bushes, is a man of profound complexities, a cheery, educated man of enormous appetites.

Before her drifted the end result of billions of years of coelenterate evolution, a collective organism of unimagined complexity.

Immediately after that, an onset of huge vibrations had taken place as the condition of the Decoupler escalated to a whole new level of complexity.

Were all my dreams a delusionary system of unparalleled complexity and influence, or was I merely a madman who happened to be right?

I have always enjoyed politics, both the complexities and strategies of the game and the vast, Dickensian comedy of it all.

Complexity thus emerges from the interpenetration of processes of differentiation and integration.

Religions of high complexity of feeling and rationale, forms of architecture, conceived in the spirit of that religion and put into its service, lyric poetry, pictorial art, sculpture, music, orders of nobility, orders of priesthood, stylized dwellings, stylized manners and dress, rigid training of the young up to these developments to perpetuate them, systems of philosophy, of mathematics, of knowledge, of nature, prodigious technical methods, giant battles, huge armies, prolonged wars, energetic economics to support this whole multifarious structure, intricately organized governments to infuse order into the nations created by the higher being acting on the different types of human materialthese are some of the floraison of forms which appear in these two areas.

I understood the thinking of Gurjan Tor in all its insidious complexity.

Although it is traditional to have Oolongs with Chinese dishes, one may argue that rich black Yunnan or Keemun teas offer more complexity and layers to the experience of tea pairings.

There was about the Madi tongue a complexity and yet an incompleteness which seemed to bind the tribe to its way, and which certainly entangled any human who tried to learn it.

Hota apologized for its sorry condition, but Magali paid no attention to the disarray and walked over to the wall beside his bed and began to inspect the weathered gray boards, running her forefinger along the black complexities of their grain, appearing to admire them as though they were made of the finest marble.