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:
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
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
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
And to speak generally, in regard of things celestial he set his face against attempts to excogitate the machinery by which the divine power formed its several operations.
From The Memorabilia by Henry Graham Dakyns
The Apostle only commanded that each action and ceremony of God's worship be decently and orderly performed, but gives us no leave to excogitate or devise new ceremonies, which have not been instituted before.
From The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) by George Gillespie
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
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 Calvin Thomas
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
He rubbed the warm pipe bowl against his cheek and excogitated the matter in deep humility.
From Septimus by William John Locke
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
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
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
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
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
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.
