Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A thinking out; the act of devising in the mind; contrivance.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The act of excogitating; a devising in the thoughts; invention; contrivance.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Careful thought or consideration.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun thinking something out with care in order to achieve complete understanding of it
  • noun the creation of something in the mind

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Right or wrong, Rumour was very busy; and Lord Decimus, while he was, or was supposed to be, in stately excogitation of the difficulty, lent her some countenance by taking, on several public occasions, one of those elephantine trots of his through a jungle of overgrown sentences, waving

    Little Dorrit 2007

  • Nobody can come to the knowledge of an event by his own reflection, by excogitation.

    Archive 2006-10-01 Fr Timothy Matkin 2006

  • Nobody can come to the knowledge of an event by his own reflection, by excogitation.

    The Bible and preaching Fr Timothy Matkin 2006

  • And it was admittedly not an excogitation of the Brahmanical mind itself.

    Oriental Religions and Christianity A Course of Lectures Delivered on the Ely Foundation Before the Students of Union Theological Seminary, New York, 1891 Frank F. Ellinwood

  • When we are alone, we are not always busy; the labour of excogitation is too violent to last long; the ardour of inquiry will sometimes give way to idleness or satiety.

    A History of English Prose Fiction Bayard Tuckerman

  • The subtiltie of which, no humane excogitation is able to imitate.

    Hypnerotomachia The Strife of Loue in a Dreame Francesco Colonna

  • After much excogitation, she had decided to leave the roses in her hair, but it had taken her ten minutes to summon up courage to go downstairs.

    The Californians Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton 1902

  • 'My advice, however, is, that you attempt, from time to time, an original sermon; and in the labour of composition, do not burthen your mind with too much at once; do not exact from yourself at one effort of excogitation, propriety of thought and elegance of expression.

    Life of Johnson Boswell, James, 1740-1795 1887

  • "Yes," agreed the young man, though with a lilt of dubiety, and a frown of excogitation, as if he weren't sure that he had quite caught her drift.

    My Friend Prospero Henry Harland 1883

  • With a diagram of these printed on the brain he had full command of the phrases which his excogitation had attached to them, and which embodied the ideas in perfect form.

    My Mark Twain (from Literary Friends and Acquaintance) William Dean Howells 1878

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