excogitate

English

Etymology

From Latin excōgitāre, from ex- + cōgitāre (“think”).

Verb

excogitate (third-person singular simple present excogitates, present participle excogitating, simple past and past participle excogitated)

1. To think over something carefully; to consider fully; cogitate.
   • 1859–1860, William Hamilton, edited by H[enry] L[ongueville] Mansel and John Veitch, Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic […], volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC:

     The first organs which Gall excogitated, he placed in the region of the sinus; and it is manifest he was then in happy unacquaintance with everything connected with that obnoxious cavity.

   • 2007, M. F. Burnyeat, ‘Other Lives’, London Review of Books 29:4, p. 3

     Did he ponder the harmony of the spheres? Certainly not: celestial spheres were first excogitated decades or more after Pythagoras' death.

2. To reach as a conclusion through reason or careful thought.

   After many years of study, he excogitated a solution.

   • 1837, William Whewell, History of the Inductive Sciences:

     This evidence […] thus excogitated out of the general theory.

Derived terms

• unexcogitated

 

Translations

to think over carefully

• Bulgarian: обмислям (bg) (obmisljam)
• Finnish: pohtia (fi), pohdiskella (fi)

to come to conclusion

• Finnish: päätyä (fi), tulla tulokseen

Latin

Verb

excōgitāte

1. second-person plural present active imperative of excōgitō