Meaning of "explain" in the English dictionary

ETYMOLOGY OF THE WORD EXPLAIN

From Latin explānāre to flatten, from plānus level.

Etymology is the study of the origin of words and their changes in structure and significance.

PRONUNCIATION OF EXPLAIN

explain  [ɪkˈspleɪn]

GRAMMATICAL CATEGORY OF EXPLAIN

Explain is a verb.

The verb is the part of the sentence that is conjugated and expresses action and state of being.

See the conjugation of the verb explain in English.

WHAT DOES EXPLAIN MEAN IN ENGLISH?

Explanation

An explanation is a set of statements constructed to describe a set of facts which clarifies the causes, context, and consequences of those facts. This description may establish rules or laws, and may clarify the existing ones in relation to any objects, or phenomena examined. The components of an explanation can be implicit, and be interwoven with one another. An explanation is often underpinned by an understanding that is represented by different media such as music, text, and graphics. Thus, an explanation is subjected to interpretation, and discussion. In scientific research, explanation is one of several "purposes" for empirical research. Explanation is a way to uncover new knowledge, and to report relationships among different aspects of studied phenomena. Explanation attempts to answer the "why" question. Explanations have varied explanatory power. The formal hypothesis is the theoretical tool used to verify explanation in empirical research.

Definition of explain in the English dictionary

The definition of explain in the dictionary is to make comprehensible, esp by giving a clear and detailed account of the relevant structure, operation, surrounding circumstances, etc. Other definition of explain is to justify or attempt to justify by giving reasons for one's actions or words.

CONJUGATION OF THE VERB TO EXPLAIN

PRESENT

Present

I explain

you explain

he/she/it explains

we explain

you explain

they explain

Present continuous

I am explaining

you are explaining

he/she/it is explaining

we are explaining

you are explaining

they are explaining

Present perfect

I have explained

you have explained

he/she/it has explained

we have explained

you have explained

they have explained

Present perfect continuous

I have been explaining

you have been explaining

he/she/it has been explaining

we have been explaining

you have been explaining

they have been explaining

Present tense is used to refer to circumstances that exist at the present time or over a period that includes the present time. The present perfect refers to past events, although it can be considered to denote primarily the resulting present situation rather than the events themselves.

PAST

Past

I explained

you explained

he/she/it explained

we explained

you explained

they explained

Past continuous

I was explaining

you were explaining

he/she/it was explaining

we were explaining

you were explaining

they were explaining

Past perfect

I had explained

you had explained

he/she/it had explained

we had explained

you had explained

they had explained

Past perfect continuous

I had been explaining

you had been explaining

he/she/it had been explaining

we had been explaining

you had been explaining

they had been explaining

Past tense forms express circumstances existing at some time in the past,

FUTURE

Future

I will explain

you will explain

he/she/it will explain

we will explain

you will explain

they will explain

Future continuous

I will be explaining

you will be explaining

he/she/it will be explaining

we will be explaining

you will be explaining

they will be explaining

Future perfect

I will have explained

you will have explained

he/she/it will have explained

we will have explained

you will have explained

they will have explained

Future perfect continuous

I will have been explaining

you will have been explaining

he/she/it will have been explaining

we will have been explaining

you will have been explaining

they will have been explaining

The future is used to express circumstances that will occur at a later time.

CONDITIONAL

Conditional

I would explain

you would explain

he/she/it would explain

we would explain

you would explain

they would explain

Conditional continuous

I would be explaining

you would be explaining

he/she/it would be explaining

we would be explaining

you would be explaining

they would be explaining

Conditional perfect

I would have explain

you would have explain

he/she/it would have explain

we would have explain

you would have explain

they would have explain

Conditional perfect continuous

I would have been explaining

you would have been explaining

he/she/it would have been explaining

we would have been explaining

you would have been explaining

they would have been explaining

Conditional or "future-in-the-past" tense refers to hypothetical or possible actions.

IMPERATIVE

Imperative

you explain
we let´s explain
you explain

The imperative is used to form commands or requests.

NONFINITE VERB FORMS

Infinitive

to explain

Past participle

explained

Present Participle

explaining

Infinitive shows the action beyond temporal perspective. The present participle or gerund shows the action during the session. The past participle shows the action after completion.

SYNONYMS OF «EXPLAIN»

The following words have a similar or identical meaning as «explain» and belong to the same grammatical category.

synonyms of explain

account for · clarify · clear up · define · demonstrate · describe · disclose · elucidate · excuse · explicate · expound · illustrate · interpret · justify · put into words · resolve · simplify · solve · teach · unfold

TRANSLATION OF EXPLAIN

Find out the translation of explain to 25 languages with our English multilingual translator.

The translations of explain from English to other languages presented in this section have been obtained through automatic statistical translation; where the essential translation unit is the word «explain» in English.

• Translator English - Chinese: 解释
• Translator English - Spanish: explicar
• English: explain
• Translator English - Hindi: समझा
• Translator English - Arabic: يَشْرَحُ
• Translator English - Russian: объяснять
• Translator English - Portuguese: explicar-se
• Translator English - Bengali: ব্যাখ্যা করা
• Translator English - French: expliquer
• Translator English - Malay: Terangkan
• Translator English - German: erklären
• Translator English - Japanese: 説明する
• Translator English - Korean: 설명하다
• Translator English - Javanese: Nerangke
• Translator English - Vietnamese: giải thích
• Translator English - Tamil: விளக்க
• Translator English - Marathi: स्पष्ट करणे
• Translator English - Turkish: açıklamak
• Translator English - Italian: spiegare
• Translator English - Polish: wyjaśnić
• Translator English - Ukrainian: пояснювати
• Translator English - Romanian: a explica
• Translator English - Greek: εξηγώ
• Translator English - Afrikaans: verduidelik
• Translator English - Swedish: förklara
• Translator English - Norwegian: forklare

10 QUOTES WITH «EXPLAIN»

Famous quotes and sentences with the word explain.

1

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

I think someone should explain to the child that it's OK to make mistakes. That's how we learn. When we compete, we make mistakes.

2

Kurt Angle

It took me a few years to explain to my colleagues and my mentors and the people that I looked up to and I wrestled that I'm not in wrestling anymore. I'm in sports entertainment. Pro' wrestling doesn't mean that we're saying we're a step up above amateur wrestling, because there's nothing above Olympic wrestling.

3

Rick Astley

You can't explain the feeling of singing hit songs to an audience - it's like being a genuine sports star at the peak of their powers.

4

Kevin Ayers

We had literary references, so we knew what we were talking about. We could quote things, talk about books we'd read; you can say something, you don't have to explain it.

5

Stanley Baldwin

You will find in politics that you are much exposed to the attribution of false motive. Never complain and never explain.

6

Michael Bergdahl

At Wal-Mart, if you couldn't explain an idea or a concept in simple terms on one page of paper Sam Walton considered the new idea too complicated to implement.

7

John Tyler Bonner

It is hard to explain the huge variety of diatoms - a microorganism that has 100,000 species - in terms of natural selection.

8

Jerome Bruner

There is a deep question whether the possible meanings that emerge from an effort to explain the experience of art may not mask the real meanings of a work of art.

9

Graydon Carter

Many of the architects of the Vietnam War became near pariahs as they spent the remainder of their lives in the futile quest to explain away their decisions at the time.

10

Joan Chen

How do you explain certain physical qualities that somehow sell on screen? You're born with it... Certain people are just more watchable, and I was more watchable, but I don't think I understood acting or drama very well when I was a kid.

10 ENGLISH BOOKS RELATING TO «EXPLAIN»

Discover the use of explain in the following bibliographical selection. Books relating to explain and brief extracts from same to provide context of its use in English literature.

Explain Pain: (Revised and Updated, 2nd Edition)

Explain Pain aims to give clinicians and people in pain the power to challenge pain and to consider new models for viewing what happens during pain.

David S Butler, G Lorimer Moseley, 2013

The Methodology of Economics: Or, How Economists Explain

A final chapter draws the strands together and gives the author's view of what is wrong with modern economics. This book is a revised and updated edition of a classic work on the methodology of economics.

Mark Blaug, 1992

Predict, Observe, Explain: Activities Enhancing Scientific ...

The powerful Predict, Observe, Explain (POE) strategy, field-tested by hundreds of teachers, is designed to foster student inquiry and challenge existing conceptions that students bring to the classroom.

John Haysom, Michael Bowen, 2010

Rich Democracies, Poor People : How Politics Explain ...

An explicit challenge to mainstream views of poverty as an inescapable outcome of individual failings or a society's labor markets and demography, this book offers institutionalized power relations theory as an alternative explanation.

David Brady Associate Professor of Sociology Duke University, 2009

What Functions Explain: Functional Explanation and ...

This 2001 book offers an examination of functional explanation as it is used in biology and the social sciences, and focuses on the kinds of philosophical presuppositions that such explanations carry with them.

Peter McLaughlin, 2000

Beautiful Code: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think

This book contains 33 chapters contributed by Brian Kernighan, KarlFogel, Jon Bentley, Tim Bray, Elliotte Rusty Harold, Michael Feathers,Alberto Savoia, Charles Petzold, Douglas Crockford, Henry S. Warren,Jr., Ashish Gulhati, Lincoln Stein, ...

Andy Oram, Greg Wilson, 2007

How Scientists Explain Disease

"This is a wonderful book! In "How Scientists Explain Disease," Paul Thagard offers us a delightful essay combining science, its history, philosophy, and sociology.

Paul Thagard, 2000

I explain a few things: selected poems

This is a hefty task: Neruda’s collected works total some six thousand pages, and Stavans admits in the introduction that Neruda ‘left us an overdose of bad poetry.’ Still, ‘an unsmoothed Neruda is better than a censored Neruda,’ ...

Pablo Neruda, Ilan Stavans, Robert Bly, 2007

Postmortem: How Medical Examiners Explain Suspicious Deaths

Can medical examiners unmask the perfect crime? Postmortem goes deep inside the world of medical examiners to uncover the intricate web of pathological, social, legal, and moral issues in which they operate.

Stefan Timmermans, 2007

Explain the purpose and importance of the Recruitment ...

We are living in the 21stcentury and organizations are more and more dependent on the external and internal environment to be profitable.

Rebecca Zimmers, 2006

10 NEWS ITEMS WHICH INCLUDE THE TERM «EXPLAIN»

Find out what the national and international press are talking about and how the term explain is used in the context of the following news items.

Ariana Grande Issues 'Donut Fiasco' Apology Video That Doesn't …

The 22-year-old singer released a statement to the press on Wednesday, explaining that she's "EXTREMELY proud to be an American" after ... «Huffington Post, Jul 15»

Harpursville parents explain why they are suing the school board

Harpursville, NY (WBNG Binghamton) Individuals representing more than 70 Harpursville residents and parents are continuing to serve ... «WBNG-TV, Jul 15»

Knox County, Rural/Metro differ over potential 'service-related' issues

That's why, county leaders say, they asked the company to explain it's "frequent use of mutual aid and what appear to be below-benchmark ... «WBIR-TV, Jul 15»

Sen. Grassley Gives Red Cross Deadline To Explain Haiti Spending

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is demanding answers from the American Red Cross on how it spent nearly half a billion dollars in Haiti after the ... «NPR, Jul 15»

Tests don't explain cobalt positives

Racing Victoria chief steward Terry Bailey says explanations provided by the stables facing charges for elevated cobalt levels have been tested ... «Racing.com, Jul 15»

Bear Necessities: Scientists Explain How Pandas Survive Eating …

Giant pandas eat vegetables even though their bodies are better equipped to eat meat. So how do these black-and-white bears from the ... «NBCNews.com, Jul 15»

Watch Kit Harington Explain The Game Of Tennis Very Thoroughly

Just like Jon Snow, Kit Harington knows nothing, at least when it comes to his tennis player, Charles Poole. In a new clip from HBO's upcoming ... «Huffington Post, Jul 15»

How can we explain Chief Justice John Roberts? RedBlue America

Chief Justice John Roberts is seen during the group portrait at the Supreme Court in Washington in this Oct. 8, 2010 file photo. (AP Photo/Pablo ... «LA Daily News, Jul 15»

Condoms to explain impact of population growth on animals

ATLANTA (AP) - The Center for Biological Diversity is giving away condoms to discuss the impact human population growth and consumption ... «WRCB-TV, Jul 15»

4 charts that help explain the prevalence of rare parasite nationwide

Exactly how common is primary amebic meningoencephalitis (PAM)? We gathered national data from the Centers for Disease Control and ... «Minneapolis Star Tribune, Jul 15»