Clear as Mud

I recently ran across the word explication and wondered how it is different from explanation and why. Explanation was in use for over 100 years before the word explication came into English in the 1520s.

Explanation is the act of explaining, and the word came to English before the word explain did; explanation came in the late 1300s, while explain didn’t appear until early the next century. Explain means to make clear or plain, and to render understandable or intelligible. Explanation came from the Latin word expanationem, which is the noun of action developed from the stem word explanare, the word from which we get explain. Explanare means to make level, flatten, or smooth, or to make clear. Ex- means “out” and planus means "flat", the word from which we also get the geometric concept of plane. Explain was originally spelled explane, but with the word plain meaning obvious its spelling changed.

In the 17th century the word explain had a meaning that helps to differentiate it from explicate. It referred to a literal unfolding of things, as in a 1664 quote from John Evelyn’s 1664 book Sylva that talks about trees that “explain into leaves.”

Explication is defined as an explanation or interpretation, a definition which doesn’t help explain the difference. The word came from the same Latin root word, explicare, but from the noun form of action explicationem, the past participle of explicare. And it took a trip through the Middle French, where it got its spelling, before coming to English.

Okay, that doesn’t explain or explicate the difference. Explicate’s definition is to make plain or clear, to explain or interpret, but also means to develop, as a principle or theory. It arrived in English about 10 years after explication. It came from the Latin word explicatus, another past participle of explicare.

So we’re left with the only difference between the two words being that explicate is used when referring to a concept, while explain is used more broadly. But otherwise they’re apparently interchangeable.

What’s interesting is comparing these two words with the word explicit. It has almost as many definitions as the previous four words combined. The first definition is fully and clearly expressed or demonstrated, while the second is clearly developed or formulated. The first meaning is a less intensive meaning than the third, which is definite and unreserved in expression; outspoken.

The word explicit came to English around 1600 from the French word explicite, which the French got from the Latin word explicitus. Explicitus means unobstructed, and is yet another variant past participle of our word of the day explicare.

An interesting use of explicitus was in the phrase explicitus est liber, which was inscribed at the end of books during the middle ages and means "the book is unrolled."

Another interesting an much more recent use is shown in the fifth definition, which refers to having sexual acts or nudity clearly depicted. Explicit wasn’t used as a euphemism for pornographic until 1971.

I hope that clears things up, that I’ve explained everything and that the explication was interesting. I was as explicit as I could be. At least you now know what explicitus est liber means. Clearly.