Excogitating

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The activity of pondering intricately to devise elaborate ideas
2. Engaging in thorough mental effort to generate complex concepts
3. Applying focused intellectual activity to form detailed and thoughtful ideas

Etymology: "Excogitating" is the present participle of "excogitate," which came into English from the Latin "excogitare," built from "ex-" ("out") and "cogitare" ("think"). Put together, the root idea is thinking something out, working a notion up from nothing into a finished form. That literal sense of drawing something out by thought is still visible in the word's shape. The English verb has kept much of that deliberate, effortful flavour. To excogitate is not simply to have an idea but to labour at one until it takes a complex, worked-out shape. The Latin prefix "ex-" did much of the work here, marking the movement from inside the mind out into the open.

Synonyms: thinking, considering, contemplating, pondering, deliberating

Antonyms: ignoring, overlooking, disregarding