Re:In Memoriam: Tim Peters 1952–2026
by isityettime on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:30AM
(#50470020)
A lot of words in English are etymologically related but have grown significant connotative or denotative differences since the root word was reintroduced to the language by another path.¹ "Complex" and "complicated" are just such a pair. They are not the same word.
In this case you can think of "complex" as referring to essential complexity and "complicated" as referring to incidental complexity.
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1: See also, for example: "intention" vs. "intension", "chief" vs. "chef", "hotel" vs. "hostel", "corpse" vs. "corps", "compliment" vs. "complement", etc. Sometimes related pairs do the opposite, entering with distinct denotations and developing overlapping ones e.g., "intellect" vs. "intelligence", and some include overlap but have had specialized senses come to dominate, e.g., "dispositive" vs. "dispositional".)
If you wanna get your head around English (or probably any language), the intuition that alerts you to related words is a very useful sensitivity, but you have to learn to absolutely resist the temptation to treat etymologically related words as identical. It's just not how language works. English seems like it might be especially rich with these "etymological doublets" (thanks ChatGPT, for teaching me this word today). They're really useful for capturing distinct shades of meaning between closely related concepts, which is exactly what they do in this adage from Tim Peters.
In this case you can think of "complex" as referring to essential complexity and "complicated" as referring to incidental complexity.
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1: See also, for example: "intention" vs. "intension", "chief" vs. "chef", "hotel" vs. "hostel", "corpse" vs. "corps", "compliment" vs. "complement", etc. Sometimes related pairs do the opposite, entering with distinct denotations and developing overlapping ones e.g., "intellect" vs. "intelligence", and some include overlap but have had specialized senses come to dominate, e.g., "dispositive" vs. "dispositional".)
If you wanna get your head around English (or probably any language), the intuition that alerts you to related words is a very useful sensitivity, but you have to learn to absolutely resist the temptation to treat etymologically related words as identical. It's just not how language works. English seems like it might be especially rich with these "etymological doublets" (thanks ChatGPT, for teaching me this word today). They're really useful for capturing distinct shades of meaning between closely related concepts, which is exactly what they do in this adage from Tim Peters.