concoct

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin concoctus (“boiled together, digested”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} the past participle of concoquō (“to boil together, digest, ripen”);^[2][4][3] the OED and the Shorter Oxford name only its participial stem.^[7][8] Barnhart rejects a derivation from the obsolete English participle concoct or a back-formation from concoction, since all are first recorded within a few years of each other, the participle and the verb both in Elyot.^[2] The Latin verb is formed from com- (“together”) and coquō (“to cook”),^{[2][3][9][10]} a verb derived from coquus (“cook”),^[10][11] from Proto-Indo-European *pekw- (“to cook, ripen”).^[3][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

To digest food: 1533, in T. Elyot's Castel of Helthe, where it is associated with boiling.^[7][2] The Oxford Dictionary of English instead gives refining metals or minerals by heat as the original sense, and cooking as a later one,^[12] which the OED dates to 1555 and 1607.^[7]

Semantic evolution

The Latin verb had moved from boiling together to digesting food, ripening and turning a matter over in the mind,^[7][10][3] and the English verb began with the physical senses, all involving some kind of heat or maturing.^[7] In early science, metals and minerals were said to be concocted, brought to their perfect state by heat, from 1555 to 1837, and fruits and juices were ripened in the same way from 1555 to 1817.^[7] Johnson (1755) still gave digesting first and purifying by heat second.^[13] The modern meanings grew from preparing food: making something, such as a soup or drink, from various ingredients is recorded from 1675, in John Evelyn.^[2][8] From there the verb was carried over to making up a story or scheme, first recorded in 1792, in Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman.^[2][3] Ayto thinks that this last use, "fabricate", is an English creation, not one of the figurative senses of the Latin verb.^[10] Weekley compares the figurative senses of brew.^[14]

Timeline

• 1533 – to digest food.^[7][2]
• 1555 – to refine metals or minerals by heat; to ripen fruits.^[7]
• 1584 – to bring boils and tumours to a head.^[7]
• 1607 – to cook, boil or bake.^[7]
• 1675 – to make a soup or drink from various ingredients.^[2][8]
• 1792 – to make up a story or scheme.^[2][3]

Meanings

Verb

1. To make something, especially a dish or drink, by combining different ingredients: He concocted a stew from whatever was left in the larder.^[15][4][8]
2. To make up or devise a story, excuse or scheme; to fabricate: The boys concocted an excuse for being late.^[15][4][8]
3. (archaic) To ripen or mature.^[4][7][8]
4. (obsolete, 1533–1833) To digest food.^[7][4][8]
5. (obsolete, 1555–1837) To refine or perfect a substance by heat.^[7][4][8]
6. (obsolete, 1607–72) To cook, boil or bake.^[7][8]

Word family

• concocter
• concoction
• concoctive

Related words

• decoct
• cook
• pepsin
• peptic

Usage notes

In Surrey dialect concoct about meant to talk something over.^[16]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
3. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
6. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
10. ^ a b c d Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
11. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
12. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
14. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
15. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
16. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)