word history: Sophisticate and sophisticated entered English in the Middle Ages, the verb meaning ‘mix with a foreign substance’ and the adjective ‘adulterated’. The root is the medieval Latin verb sophisticare ‘tamper with’, which goes back to Greek sophistēs ‘deviser, sophist’ and ultimately to sophos ‘wise’. Until the late 19th century, when it acquired the sense ‘worldly and experienced’, sophisticated meant ‘adulterated’ or ‘deprived of natural simplicity’; it did not take on the meaning ‘highly developed and complex’ until 1945.