intricacy

From intricate +‎ -acy.

• IPA^(key): /ˈɪn.tɹɪ.kə.si/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (Ireland) IPA^(key): /ɪnˈtɹɪ.kə.si/

intricacy (countable and uncountable, plural intricacies)

1. The state or quality of being intricate or entangled.

   the intricacy of a knot

   the intricacy of accounts

   the intricacy of a cause in controversy

2. Perplexity.

   Synonyms: involution, complication, complexity

   • 2013, Dean Koontz, Deeply Odd, London: HarperCollins, →ISBN, page 121:

     The breadth of Creation makes it impossible for us to step back far enough to see the story that the tapestry tells; the intricacy of it, from the macro to the micro to the subatomic, makes it impossible for us to comprehend the megatrillions of connections between the threads in just one small fragment of the whole.

3. Something which is intricate or complex.

   There are many intricacies in the plot of this novel.

   • 1845, Jordan Roche Lynch, The Hunterian Oration, page 8:

     With the most patient assiduity he peered into the intricacies of unrevealed structure. No object was too minute, none too large, for his attention.

• “intricacy”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• “intricacy”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.