See explain in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "explain",
"tags": [
"canonical"
]
},
{
"form": "explains",
"tags": [
"third-person",
"singular"
]
},
{
"form": "explained",
"tags": [
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "explained",
"tags": [
"past",
"participle"
]
},
{
"form": "explaining",
"tags": [
"present",
"participle"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"expansion": "[POS TABLE]",
"name": "verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"antonyms": [
{
"word": "complicate"
}
],
"categories": [],
"examples": [
{
"text": "Can you explain the difference between the two?"
},
{
"text": "He explained the difference between the two."
},
{
"text": "Explaining my thoughts on the topic was useless."
}
],
"glosses": [
"If you explain something, you talk about it so that somebody can understand it."
],
"id": "simple-explain-en-verb-MI~rFrMt",
"raw_tags": [
"transitive & intransitive"
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "ask"
},
{
"word": "clarify"
}
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"ipa": "/ɛkˈspleɪn/"
},
{
"audio": "en-us-explain.ogg",
"raw_tags": [
"Audio"
],
"tags": [
"US"
]
}
],
"word": "explain"
}
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "explain",
"tags": [
"canonical"
]
},
{
"form": "explains",
"tags": [
"third-person",
"singular"
]
},
{
"form": "explained",
"tags": [
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "explained",
"tags": [
"past",
"participle"
]
},
{
"form": "explaining",
"tags": [
"present",
"participle"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"expansion": "[POS TABLE]",
"name": "verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"antonyms": [
{
"word": "complicate"
}
],
"categories": [
"Intransitive verbs",
"Transitive verbs"
],
"examples": [
{
"text": "Can you explain the difference between the two?"
},
{
"text": "He explained the difference between the two."
},
{
"text": "Explaining my thoughts on the topic was useless."
}
],
"glosses": [
"If you explain something, you talk about it so that somebody can understand it."
],
"raw_tags": [
"transitive & intransitive"
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "ask"
},
{
"word": "clarify"
}
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"ipa": "/ɛkˈspleɪn/"
},
{
"audio": "en-us-explain.ogg",
"raw_tags": [
"Audio"
],
"tags": [
"US"
]
}
],
"word": "explain"
}
Download raw JSONL data for explain meaning in English (1.0kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-06-23 from the simplewiktionary dump dated 2025-06-20 using wiktextract (074e7de and f1c2b61). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.