Synonyms for explaining
- analyze
- clarify
- define
- demonstrate
- describe
- disclose
- expound
- illustrate
- interpret
- justify
- point out
- read
- resolve
- reveal
- solve
- spell out
- tell
- annotate
- construe
- decipher
- diagram
- elucidate
- excuse
- explicate
- manifest
- paraphrase
- rationalize
- refine
- render
- teach
- translate
- unfold
- unravel
- untangle
- account for
- break down
- bring out
- clear up
- get across
- go into detail
- make plain
- put across
- put in plain English
- set right
- throw light upon
Antonyms for explaining
- conceal
- confuse
- distort
- hide
- misrepresent
- misunderstand
- question
- wonder
- cloud
- mystify
- obscure
- stagnate
- tangle
- withhold
- be vague
- complicate
- perplex
EXAMPLES FROM THE WEB FOR EXPLAINING
There warn't no explaining it, but there it was and there warn't no getting around it.
Jared Wiley, the deputy, was talking to a group near the stain, explaining.
It was the wind blowing where it listed, doing everything and explaining nothing.
A whole people have been pressed into the service of explaining this mystery.
He began, as he said, with sinners, explaining the condition of men in the world.
One word of Scripture is more than a hundred words of man's explaining.
"I have a table yonder—although I appear to have forsaken it," he was explaining.
But not content with explaining the experiments of others, M. Pasteur went to work to satisfy himself completely.
Dubuche was already showing and explaining his work to his comrades.
Fortunately he forestalled the impending embrace by explaining that he was the butler.
WORD ORIGIN
early 15c., from Latin explanare "to make level, smooth out;" also "to explain, make clear" (see explanation).
Originally explane, spelling altered by influence of plain. Also see plane (v.2). In 17c., occasionally used more literally, of the unfolding of material things: Evelyn has buds that "explain into leaves" ["Sylva, or, A discourse of forest-trees, and the propagation of timber in His Majesties dominions," 1664]. Related: Explained; explaining; explains.