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:
And he had four days a week in which to excogitate new methods of creating a fortune.
From The Card, a Story of Adventure in the Five Towns by Arnold Bennett
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
"Shall I to him"—Sister Margaret paused to excogitate the Yiddish word—"write?"
From Ghetto Tragedies by Israel Zangwill
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
Yet cause must be assigned, and the best form of words he could excogitate ran thus: 'Family circumstances render it desirable—almost necessary—that I should spend the next twelve months in London.
From Born in Exile by George Gissing
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
It is always peculiarly fascinating, therefore, to subject to direct verification by observation, that is, to render palpable to the senses, something which we have only theoretically excogitated or theoretically surmised.
From Popular scientific lectures by Ernst Mach
Could not I have excogitated this Without believing such men really were?
From Browning's England A Study in English Influences in Browning by Helen Archibald Clarke
Or perhaps you have excogitated some theories of your own?
From The Secret Glory by Arthur Machen
He meditated there in a condition of insanity for perhaps a minute, and excogitated a device.
From The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett
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
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
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
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
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