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:
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 Paul, Cedar
In fact, it must require a considerable effort to excogitate novel labor-saving devices.
From By Water to the Columbian Exposition by Wisthaler, Johanna S.
Bein’ hot I lay down in the lee of a bush to excogitate.
From Black Ivory by Pearson, Francis B.
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 Bennett, Arnold
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
It is strange that any two ministers could have excogitated so monstrous a proposition, and that both should be called "Divine."
From Ancient Faiths And Modern A Dissertation upon Worships, Legends and Divinities by Inman, Thomas
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 Preuss, Arthur
But the details had not been very fully excogitated, and his foremost thought, after all, was simply to popularize the Thalia, which was largely caviare to the general.
From The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller by Thomas, Calvin
Here, for a week or a fortnight, the candidates sat and excogitated, unable to lie down at night, sleeping, if they could, in their chairs.
From Appearances Being Notes of Travel by Dickinson, G. Lowes (Goldsworthy Lowes)
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 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
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
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.
