Synonyms

distill

American

[dih-stil] / dɪˈstɪl /

especially British, distil

verb (used with object)

to subject to a process of vaporization and subsequent condensation, as for purification or concentration.
to extract the volatile components of by distillation; transform by distillation.
to concentrate, purify, or obtain by or as by distillation.

to distill whiskey from mash.
to remove by distillation (usually followed by off orout ).

to distill out impurities.
to extract the essential elements of; refine; abstract.

She managed to distill her ideas into one succinct article.
to let fall in drops; give forth in or as in drops.

The cool of the night distills the dew.

verb (used without object)

to undergo or perform distillation.
to become vaporized and then condensed in distillation.
to drop, pass, or condense as a distillate.
to fall in drops; trickle; exude.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

Inflected Forms

Participles

Conjugated Forms

Present

Past

Future

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

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.

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Vocabulary lists containing distill

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Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

distill distils distilled distilling

Moonshot’s new Kimi K3 model has upended this discussion because it earned higher scores in many benchmarks than Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.8, the most powerful model it could distill.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 20, 2026

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

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 16, 2026

Patience; communication, organizational and presentation skills; the ability to distill complex ideas; and project-management skills are all qualities and skills that can be valuable in many other professions.

From MarketWatch ● Mar. 9, 2026

For the predictions to be accurate, or efficient, the platforms rely on a pool of traders to distill the wisdom of the crowd.

From Barron's ● Feb. 27, 2026

And he’s trying to distill all of these ideas into easily digestible chunks—science meets pop science.

From "A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age" by Matt Richtel

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

That she gets there via the dancefloor is no surprise, and she distils those experiences into a luminous record that's as sticky as the title suggests.

From BBC ● Dec. 21, 2018

The OSP distils those data down to a single metric called the teaching score, which indicates how often a text is assigned in syllabuses.

From Nature ● Oct. 30, 2016

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

Cowin’s own restraint and withholding yield images of distilled power.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 25, 2026

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

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 4, 2026

Kratsios said on X that the US government has information that Moonshot AI "distilled" capabilities from Anthropic's Fable AI for the development of its K3 model.

From BBC ● Jul. 23, 2026

As sunlight is absorbed, the water evaporates and is distilled into fresh water.

From Science Daily ● May 31, 2026

The early technical fussing was crucial; by early August, the three had achieved the transformation reaction in a flask and distilled the “transforming principle” into a highly concentrated form.

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Microsoft is weighing whether to host a version of DeepSeek, an ultralow-cost AI provider based in China that OpenAI and Anthropic have called out for distilling, or copying, their top models.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 22, 2026

Transformative technologies never arrive fully formed; they rely upon determined practitioners committed to the painstaking work of distilling extravagant promise into daily practice.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 8, 2026

John D. Rockefeller was 24 in 1863 when he invested in the emerging new technology of distilling crude into kerosene.

From Barron's ● May 2, 2026

Producers roast the rounded hearts of agave plants in fire pits or kilns, then crush and ferment the cooked material before distilling it in smaller batches.

From Science Daily ● Apr. 26, 2026

There were also a few highly cryptic lines distilling the art and science of navigation.

From "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023