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:
"Shall I to him"—Sister Margaret paused to excogitate the Yiddish word—"write?"
From Ghetto Tragedies by Israel Zangwill
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
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
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 J. F. (John Fletcher) Hurst
Bein’ hot I lay down in the lee of a bush to excogitate.
From Black Ivory by Francis B. Pearson
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
When the idea is accepted odd devices are excogitated by the active little brain for making it intelligible.
From Children's Ways by James Sully
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 Henry Coppee
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
He rubbed the warm pipe bowl against his cheek and excogitated the matter in deep humility.
From Septimus by William John Locke
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
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
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
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
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