Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
➕ To include 🚨 To connect with 🧩 To make complex
to involve

to involve

1 4.6
Make a situation or process more complicated and hard to understand
  • verb
  • /ɪnˈvɑlv/
: complicar
  • Organizing the event will involve coordinating with several vendors and managing schedules.
  • processes involved
  • complexities involved
  • tasks involved

Examples

  • Teachers and other school staff were involved in the program in numerous ways (Table 3).

    Academic text (2011)

  • It involves plays of Eurodollars against oil shipments.

    The Boost (1988)

  • So was there also a legal battle involved with with this process?

  • What is the inner work involved that helps women?

  • And it involves me and my magic book.

    Smurfs (2025)

  • But none of these involve cooperation in production.

  • Anything which involves those kinds of tasks?

  • Very few are simple, and the majority involve multiple issues that are not always strictly copyright-related.

    Academic text (2011)

  • All stakeholders, including secondary students, can be involved in identifying and applying appropriate expectations for schools.

    Academic text (2011)

  • The website is an excellent resource for anyone involved in emergency response strategies or fields related to oceanography.

    Academic text (2011)

Synonyms

to complicate
vsto involve
136 4.1

To make something harder to understand or do

focuses on creating complexity that makes things hard to understand
to tangle
vsto involve
39 6.0

To involve someone in a difficult situation, often without meaning to

is about causing complexity intentionally rather than accidental involvement
to knot
vsto involve
4 6.5

To make something tangled and difficult to understand

uses a general idea of complexity rather than a physical tightening image
to entangle
vsto involve
4 6.3

Involve someone in a difficult situation they cannot easily get out of

refers to making something complex rather than focusing on being trapped
to overcomplicate
vsto involve
2 5.8

Make something harder than it needs to be

means causing complexity without implying unnecessary excess

Antonyms

to clarify
255 3.3

To make something clear so others can understand it

to simplify
104 2.5

Make something easier to understand or use

How Complicated

to entangle
13 4.9
to involve
1 4.6
to complicate
136 4.1

Surface Forms

involve infinitive
involved past
involved past participle
involving present participle
involves third person singular

Morphology

involve = in + volve

Opaque because the root 'volve' is not a standalone English word and the Latin prefix 'in-' does not yield a transparently compositional meaning for typical learners.

Etymology

Involve comes from Latin in- 'in' and volvere 'to roll', the same root as revolve. Think of ideas or steps being 'rolled together' until they are wrapped up and hard to separate. So, to involve something can be to make it more complex or tangled.