elaborate

elaborate on (someone or something)

To expand on a particular topic or idea. To say more about someone or something. Can you elaborate on that? I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to do there. In your next draft, I think you should really elaborate on your reading of this paragraph of the novel.
See also: elaborate, on
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

elaborate on someone or something

to give additional details about someone or something. Would you care to elaborate on that? I want to know more about Kelly. Could you elaborate on her?
See also: elaborate, on
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.
See also:
  • a mine of information
  • as for
  • as for somebody/something
  • open (one's) mind (to something)
  • open mind
  • open your mind to
  • opening
  • argue with
  • argue with (one)
  • argue with (someone) about (something)
References in periodicals archive
Unfortunately, giving an elaborate message for why the false information was encountered in the first place could actually backfire by increasing the long-term persistence of the false information.
The report further elaborates the drivers and challenges that the industry is facing in the current market scenario.
Such festivities, which called for the services of distinguished poets, artists and musicians and often involved elaborate staging, cost a huge amount of money at a time when the kingdom at large was poverty-stricken.
Elaborate machines, in other words, don't result from sightless modification.
Ashley Russ, a 13-year-old pupil at Mountain Ash Comprehensive School, has been having increasingly elaborate patterns cut into his hair and is currently sporting a design that incorporates his surname on one side of his head.
The elaborate means we in the West use to thwart opportunism are less necessary where the loyalty of family can be assumed.
Dancers in various categories are called into the arena and take center stage in their elaborate regalia.
This [new version] is not as elaborate as the first, due to my many engagements and preoccupations and studies--and this is also my excuse for any shortcomings and mistakes that may be found in it--because I have written it in a hurry and did not have the chance to recheck it, so [I hope that] if [my master] finds any mistakes in it, he will kindly correct and make an extra effort to hide such faults from a person who is indebted to him for his many favors and the one who executed his affairs following his passions, though not partial to any position.
Providing souvenirs more elaborate (and expensive) than the swiped pool towel is not unfamiliar to Hawaii's hotels.
Yocasta, 2000, named after Oedipus's mother, consists of four large color photographs hanging over wall-mounted tables shaped like the sterilizers hairdressers use for their tools; it depicts the head of a robust beauty--a postmodern, pedestrian Helene Fourment with an elaborate hairdo.
Robing the king was an elaborate 90-minute ritual each morning, with attendants crowding the antechambers awaiting their turn to enter.
Elaborate glass facets and distortions of light restrict the viewer to the exterior.
There's much more attention given to providing an elaborate funeral than an elaborate wedding.
Begin waving your arms in any elaborate manner and make motions with your hands as though you were Mandrake feeling up a sexy giantess.
> The climax of Ghost Month comes on the 15th of the month with the Chung Yuan Festival, when great sacrificial feasts are set out in temples and homes, and Taoist and Buddhist priests conduct elaborate chanting ceremonies for the dead.