verb
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to devise, invent, or contrive
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to think out in detail
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of excogitate
First recorded in 1520–30; from Latin excōgitātus, past participle of excōgitāre “to devise, invent, think out”; see ex- 1, cogitate
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:
Yet even Varchi shares the prevailing conviction that the proper method is first to excogitate a perfect political system, and then to impress that like a stamp upon the material of the commonwealth.
From Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) The Age of the Despots by John Addington Symonds
The Apostle only commanded that each action and ceremony of God's worship be decently and orderly performed, but gives us no leave to excogitate or devise new ceremonies, which have not been instituted before.
From The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) by George Gillespie
One morning he went out for a walk beyond the town limits to excogitate the final touches for some sentences that were to annihilate the infidel Frenchman.
From Casanova's Homecoming by Cedar Paul
The following series of possibilities are curiously interesting, both from their partial subsequent realization, and from the simple credulity with which Bacon gives us that which he had known "a wise man explicitly excogitate."
From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 368, June 1846 by Various
I wouldn't put the question to you for the world, and expose you to the inconvenience of having to—a— excogitate an answer.
From Washington Square by Henry James
Last month, having excogitated 290 questions and created perhaps the most elaborate thinking test ever devised, they stunned a group of the nation's smartest high-school graduates with it.
From Time Magazine Archive
A dozen forms exceedingly different might be excogitated, which, provided that they all agreed in being strange to a Roman, would, when moulded into a Latin form, become alike.
From The Ethnology of the British Islands by R. G. (Robert Gordon) Latham
He rubbed the warm pipe bowl against his cheek and excogitated the matter in deep humility.
From Septimus by William John Locke
Nature in a mirror is just nature, not nature thought out, excogitated, turned to human uses, interpreted in human words.
From The Critical Game by John Albert Macy
However, theologians have excogitated a hypothetical case in which an action may be physically free without being meritorious.
From Grace, Actual and Habitual A Dogmatic Treatise by Arthur Preuss
It features essays by 22 scholars, all solemnly excogitating on such weighty matters as whether the horseshoes in his pictures are from dray horses or Thoroughbreds.
From Time Magazine Archive
He set about excogitating an alphabet; but actually forgot to give names to his letters, which afterwards baffled him before literary men.
From Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 by Isaac Disraeli
Hence, too, it is that we hunt through the mental train, excogitating from the present or some other, and from similar or contrary or coadjacent.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Slice 7 "Arundel, Thomas" to "Athens" by Various
An execrable Triumvirate—a scandalum magnatum to all public bodies: I suppose they and their adherents are now sitting in Pandemonium, excogitating their diabolical machinations against us.
From The Politician Out-Witted by Montrose Jonas Moses
It is a marvellous thing that they who engage in excogitating this kind of double-meaning literature about bimetallism, should suppose that the people can any longer be deluded with it.
From The Arena Volume 18, No. 93, August, 1897 by Various
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
