distill

American  

[dih-stil] / dɪˈstɪl /

especially British, distil

verb (used with object)

• distils,
  present (3rd person singular)
• distilled,
  past participle,  past
• distilling
  present participle

1. to subject to a process of vaporization and subsequent condensation, as for purification or concentration.

2. to extract the volatile components of by distillation; transform by distillation.

3. to concentrate, purify, or obtain by or as by distillation.

   to distill whiskey from mash.

4. to remove by distillation (usually followed by off orout ).

   to distill out impurities.

5. to extract the essential elements of; refine; abstract.

   She managed to distill her ideas into one succinct article.

6. to let fall in drops; give forth in or as in drops.

   The cool of the night distills the dew.

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verb (used without object)

• distils,
  present (3rd person singular)
• distilled,
  past participle,  past
• distilling
  present participle

1. to undergo or perform distillation.

2. to become vaporized and then condensed in distillation.

3. to drop, pass, or condense as a distillate.

4. to fall in drops; trickle; exude.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• redistillableness
  noun
• redistill
  verb (used with object)
• distillable
  adjective
• nondistillable
  adjective
• redistillable
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Participles

• distilling
  present
• distilled
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• distill
  simple
• distils
  simple
• have distilled
  perfect
• has distilled
  perfect
• am distilling
  progressive
• are distilling
  progressive
• is distilling
  progressive
• have been distilling
  perfect progressive
• has been distilling
  perfect progressive

Past

• distilled
  simple
• had distilled
  perfect
• was distilling
  progressive
• were distilling
  progressive
• had been distilling
  perfect progressive

Future

• will distill
  simple
• will have distilled
  perfect
• will be distilling
  progressive
• will have been distilling
  perfect progressive

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Etymology

Origin of distill

First recorded in 1325–75; Middle English distillen (from Anglo-French distiller ), from Latin distillāre, variant of dēstillāre, equivalent to dē- de- + stillāre to drip

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Explanation

When you distill something, you are boiling it down to its essence — its most important part. Whether it's alcohol or ideas, the distilled part is the most powerful. The original meaning of distill comes from the process of making alcohol, known as distilling, in which all the impurities of a substance are vaporized and its pure, high-alcohol condensation collected. Distill eventually came to mean any process in which the essence of something is revealed. If you take notes at a lecture and then turn them into an essay for your professor, you're distilling your notes into something more pure and exact. At least, that's what you hope you're doing.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

distill distils distilled distilling

A.I.-powered diagnostics distill all of this into one clear picture of your entire body, in 360-degree, piercing-into-the-soul, high-resolution detail.

From Slate ● Oct. 8, 2026

When AI developers distill closed models such as Claude, it is a tougher question.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 9, 2026

Like any good pastor, he knows how to distill that discontent into soundbites and stories.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 30, 2026

“Diamond in a Coal Mine” and “Hey God” distill her roots and arrival.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 16, 2026

“Sheriff, how many times do I have to ask that you send them down to the lab? I can’t do anything here, and it takes a while to distill the vaccine.”

From "Dread Nation" by Justina Ireland

The report, culminating a two-year evaluation of the 2015 Paris climate agreement goals, distils thousands of submissions from experts, governments and campaigners.

From Reuters ● Sep. 8, 2023

Sullivan says that the result he is proudest of is one he obtained in 1977, which distils the crucial properties of a space using a tool called rational homotopy.

From Scientific American ● Mar. 28, 2022

Ram developed a tool called Holepunch for projects that use the statistical programming language R. Holepunch distils the process of setting up Binder into four simple commands.

From Nature ● Nov. 4, 2019

Although it seems a trivial example, the video clearly distils many of Labour's key policies into a 38 second long video, and was aimed a young audience unlikely to watch a conventional political broadcast.

From BBC ● Mar. 30, 2018

Well, there may be a poison that distils itself out of good things; in an age when the existence of ptomaines is a mystery we should not wonder at anything!

From "Dracula" by Bram Stoker

White wine vinegar — or even plain distilled white vinegar — is excellent with potatoes, creamy chicken soups and corn chowders.

From Salon ● Oct. 5, 2026

Scent is “memory, mood and emotion, distilled into something you can’t see but never forget,” Air Aroma said in a Facebook post earlier this year.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 3, 2026

Near the end of our conversation, he told me that foregrounding his own experience was most easily distilled by his ambitions.

From Slate ● Sep. 17, 2026

I’ve distilled their wisdom into three nonnegotiable rules that I now live by.

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 4, 2026

A man of few words, Mendel was even more concise in his writing: he had distilled nearly a decade’s work into forty-four spectacularly dreary pages.

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee

The San Francisco-based AI lab also accused Chinese developers of deceptively using Claude to produce responses to user queries while simultaneously "distilling" that data to improve their own models.

From Barron's ● Sep. 11, 2026

Chinese developers have relied on a mix of ingenuity, state support, open-source sharing and distilling from U.S. models.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026

On that last track, recorded a dozen years ago, Mr. Lloyd, playing alto sax, seems like a fountain, distilling fragments of songs and scales into a narrative that spills forth in graceful gushes.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 5, 2026

After pausing distilling operations in Clermont, the company moved most of its production to its Booker Noe facility just down the street, named for Noe’s grandfather.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 17, 2026

It makes you think you’ve always felt like this, and there’s no place to go but down, where it slowly, ravenously digests your will, distilling it into the ebony crude of nightmares.

From "Challenger Deep" by Neal Shusterman

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Related Words

• condense
• extract
• infuse
• refine

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