Intricate, a.
Etymology: [L. intricatus, p. p. of intricare to entangle, perplex. Cf. Intrigue, Extricate.]
Entangled; involved; perplexed; complicated; difficult to understand, follow, arrange, or adjust; as, intricate machinery, labyrinths, accounts, plots, etc. His style was fit to convey the most intricate business to the understanding with the utmost clearness. Addison. The nature of man is intricate. Burke.
Syn. -- Intricate, Complex, Complicated. A thing is complex when it is made up of parts; it is complicated when those parts are so many, or so arranged, as to make it difficult to grasp them; it is intricate when it has numerous windings and confused involutions which it is hard to follow out. What is complex must be resolved into its parts; what is complicated must be drawn out and developed; what is intricate must be unraveled.
1 other Webster entry under this spelling
Intricate, v. t.
To entangle; to involve; to make perplexing. [Obs.] It makes men troublesome, and intricates all wise discourses. Jer. Taylor.
Shades of meaning
Fernald has no entry of its own for intricate; he lists it under complex, obscure.
Where he writes about it:
In a complex object the arrangement and relation of parts may be perfectly clear; in a complicated mechanism the parts are so numerous, or so combined, that the mind can not readily grasp their mutual relations; in an intricate arrangement the parts are so intertwined that it is difficult to follow their windings; things are involved which are rolled together so as not to be easily separated, either in thought or in fact; things which are tangled or entangled mutually hold and draw upon each other. — from complex
The conception of a material object is usually complex, involving form, color, size, and other elements; a clock is a complicated mechanism; the Gordian knot was intricate; the twining serpents of the Laocoon are involved. — from complex
We speak of an abstruse statement, a complex conception, a confused heap, a heterogeneous mass, a tangled skein, an intricate problem; of composite architecture, an involved sentence; of the complicated or intricate accounts of a great business, the entangled accounts of an incompetent or dishonest bookkeeper. — from complex