Elaborate vs. Illustrate — What's the Difference?

Planned or executed with painstaking attention to numerous parts or details

Provide (a book, newspaper, etc.) with pictures

Intricate and rich in detail

Serve as an example of

To work out with care and detail; develop thoroughly

To clarify or explain, as by the use of examples or comparisons

To produce or compose (a substance, for example) from simpler elements.

To serve as an example or clarification of

To explain something at greater length or in greater detail

To provide (a text) with explanatory or decorative images

Complex, detailed, or sophisticated.

(Obsolete) To light up; illuminate.

Intricate, fancy, flashy, or showy.

To present a clarification, example, or explanation.

(transitive) to develop in detail or complexity

(obsolete) To shed light upon.

(intransitive) (sometimes followed by on or upon, and then the object of the preposition) to expand/enlarge in detail

(figurative) To clarify something by giving, or serving as, an example or a comparison.

Wrought with labor; finished with great care; studied; executed with exactness or painstaking; as, an elaborate discourse; an elaborate performance; elaborate research.

To provide a book or other publication with pictures, diagrams or other explanatory or decorative features.

To produce with labor

(obsolete) To give renown or honour to; to make illustrious.

To perfect with painstaking; to improve or refine with labor and study, or by successive operations; as, to elaborate a painting or a literary work.

To make clear, bright, or luminous.

Add details, as to an account or idea; clarify the meaning of and discourse in a learned way, usually in writing;

To set in a clear light; to exhibit distinctly or conspicuously.

Produce from basic elements or sources; change into a more developed product;

To make clear, intelligible, or apprehensible; to elucidate, explain, or exemplify, as by means of figures, comparisons, and examples.

Make more complex, intricate, or richer;

To adorn with pictures, as a book or a subject; to elucidate with pictures, as a history or a romance.

Work out in detail;

To give renown or honor to; to make illustrious; to glorify.

Marked by complexity and richness of detail;

Illustrated; distinguished; illustrious.

Developed or executed with care and in minute detail;

Clarify by giving an example of

Depict with an illustration

E.g., illustrate a book with drawings