Complicit and ItsAccomplices

Complicit is a relatively recent addition to English vocabulary, arriving in the mid-1800s. It is aback-formation fromcomplicity “association or participation in a wrongful act,” which came straight from a French word of the same meaning,complicité, in the 1600s. The oldest English word in this family is the now-obsoletecomplice (pronounced /COMP-liss/)—defined as “an associate or accomplice especially in crime”—which dates back to the 1400s, when it came from French. These words ultimately derive from the Latin verb meaning “to fold together,”complicare, formed by combiningcom- (meaning “with,” “together,” or “jointly”) and the verbplicare, meaning “to fold.”

This literal meaning evolved into a figurative one: the definition ofcomplicit, “helping to commit a crime or do wrong,” describes individuals who are “folded together” metaphorically.Complicity and the its cousinsaccomplice,complicitous, andcomplice are all part of this gang.

Complicare, in a second of its Latin senses, “to twist together,” is the root of another English word,complicate, which originally meant “to unite intimately by intertwining.” In this case, the idea of things “twisted together” makes sense as an image of something composed of many elements, that is, something complicated. The-pli- of these words is fromplicare (“to fold”), which is also the root ofply, the verb meaning “to twist together” or the noun meaning “one of several layers.”

Other words that derive fromplicare are also illuminated by their etymologies:explicit “revealed without ambiguity” ultimately comes from Latinexplicare, meaning “to unfold,” whileimplicit, meaning “implied,” descends from a Latin verb whose roots literally mean “to fold in.”

back-formation fromcomplicity, probably afterexplicit,implicit

Note: Strictly speaking, the derivation ofcomplicit fromcomplicity is not a back-formation, unless-y is taken as the suffix-yentry 2, which seems unlikely. The derivation presumably depends on the acceptability ofcomplicit beside the established wordsexplicit andimplicit. A regularly formed adjective derivative ofcomplicity iscomplicitous.

1861, in the meaning definedabove

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