Word.ws English Dictionary

explain'd

explain'd is the simple past and past participle of explain.

Meaning of explain

Verb

explain (third-person singular simple present explains, present participle explaining, simple past and past participle explained)

  1. (transitive) To make plain, manifest, or intelligible; to clear of obscurity; to illustrate the meaning of.
    • The issue was explained to the governor in detail.
  2. (transitive) To give the reason for, justification for, or cause of.
    • It is tempting to speculate about the incentives or compulsions that might explain why anyone would take to the skies in [the] basket [of a balloon]: perhaps out of a desire to escape the gravity of this world or to get a preview of the next; […].2013 June 7, David Simpson, “Fantasy of navigation”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 26, page 36
  3. (obsolete) To make flat, smooth out.
  4. (obsolete) To unfold or make visible.
    • April 14, 1684, John Evelyn, a letter sent to the Royal Society concerning the damage done to his gardens by the preceding winter
      The horse-chestnut is […] ready to explain its leaf.
  5. (intransitive) To make something plain or intelligible.
    • She tried to explain but he wouldn’t listen.

Questions about explain'd

What is explain'd the simple past and past participle of?
Explain'd is the simple past and past participle of explain.

Words near explain'd in the dictionary

  1. expiscator
  2. expiscators
  3. expiscatory
  4. explain
  5. explain away
  6. explain'd
  7. explainabilities
  8. explainability
  9. explainable
  10. explaination
  11. explainations

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: explain'd (page history and authors); explain (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “explain'd.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/explain%27d. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.