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From Middle English compleet (full, complete), a borrowing from Old French complet or Latin completus, past participle of compleō (I fill up, I complete) (whence also complement, compliment), from com- + pleō (I fill, I fulfill) (whence also deplete, replete, plenty), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *pleh₁- (to fill) (English full).

Alternative forms[edit]


  • IPA(key): /kəmˈpliːt/
  • (file)
  • Rhymes: -iːt
  • Hyphenation: com‧plete


complete (third-person singular simple present completes, present participle completing, simple past and past participle completed)

  1. (transitive) To finish; to make done; to reach the end.
    He completed the assignment on time.
  2. (transitive) To make whole or entire.
    The last chapter completes the book nicely.

Usage notes[edit]


Related terms[edit]




complete (comparative completer or more complete, superlative completest or most complete)

  1. With all parts included; with nothing missing; full.
    My life will be complete once I buy this new television.
    She offered me complete control of the project.
    After she found the rook, the chess set was complete.
    • 2012 March-April, Terrence J. Sejnowski, “Well-connected Brains”, in American Scientist[1], volume 100, number 2, page 171:
  2. Finished; ended; concluded; completed.
    When your homework is complete, you can go and play with Martin.
  3. Generic intensifier.
    He is a complete bastard!
    It was a complete shock when he turned up on my doorstep.
    Our vacation was a complete disaster.
  4. (analysis, Of a metric space) in which every Cauchy sequence converges.
  5. (algebra, Of a lattice) in which every set with a lower bound has a greatest lower bound.
  6. (mathematics, Of a category) in which all small limits exist.
  7. (logic, of a proof system of a formal system)   With respect to a given semantics, that any well-formed formula which is (semantically) valid must also be provable.[1]
    • Gödel's first incompleteness theorem showed that Principia could not be both consistent and complete. According to the theorem, for every sufficiently powerful logical system (such as Principia), there exists a statement G that essentially reads, "The statement G cannot be proved." Such a statement is a sort of Catch-22: if G is provable, then it is false, and the system is therefore inconsistent; and if G is not provable, then it is true, and the system is therefore incomplete.WP
  8. (computing theory) With respect to a complexity class, used of a problem that is in that class and such that every other problem in that class can be reduced to it (usually in polynomial time or logarithmic space).
    • 2007, Yi-Kai Liu, The Complexity of the Consistency and N-representability Problems for Quantum States, page 17:
      QMA arises naturally in the study of quantum computation, and it also has a complete problem, Local Hamiltonian, which is a generalization of k-SAT.
    • 2009, Sanjeev Arora and Boaz Barak, Computational Complexity: A Modern Approach, page 137:
      BPP behaves differently in some ways from other classes we have seen. For example, we know of no complete languages for BPP.



Derived terms[edit]


External links[edit]


  1. ^ Sainsbury, Mark [2001] Logical Forms : An Introduction to Philosophical Logic. Blackwell Publishing, Hong Kong (2010), page 358.


Most common English words before 1923: distribute · ordinary · forms · #948: complete · access · ways · grave



complete (comparative plus complete, superlative le plus complete)

  1. complete



complete f pl

  1. feminine plural of completo




  1. second-person plural present active imperative of compleō




  1. first-person singular present subjunctive of completar
  2. third-person singular present subjunctive of completar
  3. first-person singular imperative of completar
  4. third-person singular imperative of completar




  1. Formal second-person singular (usted) imperative form of completar.
  2. First-person singular (yo) present subjunctive form of completar.
  3. Formal second-person singular (usted) present subjunctive form of completar.