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:
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
Bein’ hot I lay down in the lee of a bush to excogitate.
From Black Ivory by Pearson, Francis B.
Here the little thinker is not often left to excogitate a theory for himself.
From Children's Ways by Sully, James
The writers who used these expressions did not mean that as reason is given by God, so whatever reason may excogitate is the word of God.
From History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology by Hurst, J. F. (John Fletcher)
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 James, Henry
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
He rubbed the warm pipe bowl against his cheek and excogitated the matter in deep humility.
From Septimus by Locke, William John
This is the most perfect form of absolutism ever yet excogitated in any man's brains.
From Letters From Rome on the Council by D?llinger, Johann Joseph Ignaz von
It was during this period that, with no other books than the Bible and Fox's Book of Martyrs, he excogitated his allegory.
From English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History Designed as a Manual of Instruction by Coppee, Henry
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
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 Disraeli, Isaac
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 Moses, Montrose Jonas
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
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.
