excoction

English

Etymology

Latin excoctio.

Noun

excoction (usually uncountable, plural excoctions)

1. (obsolete) The act of excocting or boiling out.
   • 1605, Francis Bacon, “(please specify |book=1 or 2)”, in The Twoo Bookes of Francis Bacon. Of the Proficience and Aduancement of Learning, Diuine and Humane, London: […] [Thomas Purfoot and Thomas Creede] for Henrie Tomes, […], →OCLC:

     For in the excoctions and depurations of Metalls it is a familiar error that to advance excoction , they augment the heate of the Fornace , or the Quantity of the Iniection

   • 2011, Brandon Look, The Continuum Companion to Leibniz:

     This much is in agreement with what many earlier mechanists had recognized, but Leigniz adds a further principle from the chemical tradition, arguing that it is not just a hydraulico-pneumatical machine, but also a 'pyrotechnical' machine, to the extent that its first motion is generated out of the production of heat in the excoction of chyle from the aliment it takes in.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “excoction”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)