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:
No other author would have taken the trouble to excogitate him, and then treat him so badly.
From G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study by Julius West
Bein’ hot I lay down in the lee of a bush to excogitate.
From Black Ivory by Francis B. Pearson
In fact, it must require a considerable effort to excogitate novel labor-saving devices.
From By Water to the Columbian Exposition by Johanna S. Wisthaler
"Shall I to him"—Sister Margaret paused to excogitate the Yiddish word—"write?"
From Ghetto Tragedies by Israel Zangwill
But they err who excogitate from it those severe dogmas which express only dreams of the imagination and wishes of the religious spirit.
From History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology by J. F. (John Fletcher) Hurst
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
The philosophies excogitated by the insulated intellect help nothing toward even a glimpse of these secrets.
From An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry by Hiram Corson
Or perhaps you have excogitated some theories of your own?
From The Secret Glory by Arthur Machen
If, then, there were several systems excogitated, equally satisfying to our purely logical needs, they would still have to be passed in review, and approved or rejected by our aesthetic and practical nature.
From The Will to Believe : and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy by William James
Whoever it was, he must have excogitated the idea at a distance, and in some splenetic humour; it never could have entered through his eyesight standing here.
From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 61, No. 376, February, 1847 by Various
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
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
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
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.
