Dictionary

decoct en · VERB

Pronunciation

• /dɪˈkɒkt/ (UK)
• /dəˈkɑkt/ (General-American)
• (Southern-England) audio

Etymology

From Latin dēcoquō (“to boil down”), from dē- + coquō (“to cook”).

Meanings

1. To make an infusion.
2. To reduce, or concentrate by boiling down.
   • Her ambition had hitherto been confined to being the best of wives,—so she scolded the servants—opened no book but her book of receipts—made soup without meat—decocted cowslips, parsneps, currants, and gooseberries, which, if not good wine, were very tolerable vinegar 1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter IV, in Romance and Reality. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 54:
3. (figuratively) To heat as if by boiling.
   • Can ſodden Water, / A Drench for ſur-reyn’d Iades, their Barly broth, / Decoct their cold blood to ſuch valiant heat? 1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene v], page 80, column 1:
4. (figuratively) To reduce or diminish.
   • […] and that rednesse / may neuere tournë to whiteness / (as clerkës sayn,) but yef so be / it be decoct by charyte, […] 1426 [c. 1330], Guillaume de Deguileville, translated by John Lydgate, edited by F. J. Furnivall, The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man, K. Paul, Trench, Trübner & co., translation of Le pèlerinage de la vie humaine (in Middle French), published 1904, page 655:
5. To digest in the stomach.
   • Here ſhe [the body] attracts, and there ſhe doth retain; / There ſhe decocts, and doth the food prepare; / There ſhe diſtributes it to ev’ry vein, / There ſhe expels what ſhe may fitly ſpare. a. 1626, Sir John Davies, The Original, Nature, and Immortality of the Soul, R. & A. Foulis, published 1759, page 46:
6. (transitive) To devise.

Forms

Deriveds

undecocted · decoctible · decoctive

Relateds

decoction