Word.ws English Dictionary

profundify

Syllables: pro·fund·ify/pɹəˈfʌndɪfaɪ/

profundify verb: to make profound; to make a concept unnecessarily complicated.

Verb

profundify (third-person singular simple present profundifies, present participle profundifying, simple past and past participle profundified)

  1. (humorous, often) To make profound; to make a concept unnecessarily complicated.
    • But where's the use of invoking the Muses, when they are provoked by droppings of inspiration from a stone, in which the measure and the meaning are most happily profundified?1821 May, “Hildebrand Snapdragon”, “Manchester versus 'Manchester Poetry'”, in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, volume IX, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood; T[homas] Cadell and W. Davies, →OCLC...
    • To profundify or to profundicate: A Borenverb used to denote the use of thesauric and other enrichment techniques to make a simple idea appear to be profound. […] Graduates of agricultural institutions tend to use "to profundicate" while graduates of ivy league schools tend to use "to profundify".1976, James H. Boren, The Bureaucratic Zoo: The Search for the Ultimate Mumble, McLean, Va.: EPM Publications, →ISBN, page 4
    Synonyms:
    profundicate

Examples of profundify in a sentence

  • […] Deutscher's technique throughout his verbose trilogy is to go back and forth in time to profundify a given phenomenon.1977, Midstream, volume XXIII, New York, N.Y.: Theodor Herzl Foundation, →ISSN, page 85:
  • You should learn to profundify and to profundicate.1979, The Proceedings – Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools. Annual Convention, Philadelphia, Penn.: Middle States...
  • Said he: “She will never reach the optimum of her new pursuits unless she learns to profundify the justifications of her options.”1981, “Correction, please!”, in The Review of the News, volume 17, Belmont, Mass.: Review of the News, Inc., →ISSN, page 55:

Synonyms of profundify

Forms of profundify

third-person singular presentprofundifies
present participleprofundifying
past participleprofundified
pastprofundified

Origin of profundify

Latin profundus (“profound”) + -ify. Post-19th-century uses popularized by American humorist James Boren (1925–2010).

Questions about profundify

What does profundify mean?
Profundify means to make profound; to make a concept unnecessarily complicated.
How do you use profundify in a sentence?
[…] Deutscher's technique throughout his verbose trilogy is to go back and forth in time to profundify a given phenomenon.
What part of speech is profundify?
Profundify is a verb.
How do you pronounce profundify?
Profundify is pronounced /pɹəˈfʌndɪfaɪ/.
What is the past tense of profundify?
The past tense of profundify is profundified.

Words near profundify in the dictionary

  1. profundicated
  2. profundicates
  3. profundicating
  4. profundified
  5. profundifies
  6. profundify
  7. profundifying
  8. profundities
  9. profunditude
  10. profundity
  11. profundulid

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: profundify (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-profundify.wav.

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