SOPHISTICATED

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does sophisticated mean? 

• SOPHISTICATED (adjective)
  The adjective SOPHISTICATED has 3 senses:

1. having or appealing to those having worldly knowledge and refinement and savoir-faire

2. ahead in development; complex or intricate

3. intellectually appealing

  Familiarity information: SOPHISTICATED used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SOPHISTICATED (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Having or appealing to those having worldly knowledge and refinement and savoir-faire

Context example:

a sophisticated book

Similar:

blase; worldly (very sophisticated especially because of surfeit; versed in the ways of the world)

intelligent; well-informed (possessing sound knowledge)

polished; refined; urbane (showing a high degree of refinement and the assurance that comes from wide social experience)

worldly-wise (experienced in and wise to the ways of the world)

Also:

elegant (refined and tasteful in appearance or behavior or style)

disenchanted (freed from enchantment)

cosmopolitan; widely distributed (growing or occurring in many parts of the world)

informed (having much knowledge or education)

literate (able to read and write)

secular; temporal; worldly (characteristic of or devoted to the temporal world as opposed to the spiritual world)

Antonym:

naive (marked by or showing unaffected simplicity and lack of guile or worldly experience)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Ahead in development; complex or intricate

Synonyms:

advanced; sophisticated

Context example:

a sophisticated electronic control system

Similar:

hi-tech; high-tech (resembling or making use of highly advanced technology or devices)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Intellectually appealing

Context example:

a sophisticated drama

Similar:

intellectual (appealing to or using the intellect)

 Context examples 

Nevertheless, it is not clear if sleep allows for more sophisticated forms of learning.

(Learning While Sleeping?, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

Over the years, nutrition science has become more sophisticated, and research by ARS scientists is showing that counting calories isn't always as simple as it may seem.

(Going Nuts Over Calories, U.S. Department of Agriculture)

The sophisticated piano-sized spacecraft, which launched in January 2006, reached Neptune's orbit — nearly 4.4. billion kilometers from Earth — in a record eight years and eight months.

(NASA Pluto-Bound Spacecraft Crosses Neptune's Orbit, NASA)

The new value is derived from Mars’ gravity field, a global model that can be extracted from satellite tracking data using sophisticated mathematical tools.

(New Gravity Map Suggests Mars Has a Porous Crust, NASA)

Visualizing a virus, or other structures that exist on a nanoscale level, typically requires expensive, sophisticated microscopes.

(Smartphone microscope detects nanoparticles and viruses, NIH)

"With sophisticated computer models, we can understand what happens with every single water molecule in a very, very small droplet."

(Scientists probe the limits of ice, National Science Foundation)

It will allow you to have a bigger, more sophisticated role than the one you have had, one you will be ready to assume.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

Making sense of these remote observations requires the development of sophisticated models for planetary climate and evolution to allow scientists to recognize which of these distant planets that might host life.

(Some Exoplanets May Have Greater Variety of Life than Exists on Earth, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

The simulations resulting from a sophisticated model the researchers used show that solar tsunamis could be the connection that explains the Sun's remarkably rapid transition from one cycle to the next.

('Terminators' on the sun trigger plasma tsunamis, start of new solar cycles, National Science Foundation)

Far from operating as a reflex, color perception involves a set of sophisticated brain operations that ultimately assign value and meaning to what we see.

(Rosy health and sickly green: color associations play robust role in reading faces, National Institutes of Health)