Word.ws English Dictionary

disgest

disgest is the obsolete form of digest.

Meaning of digest

Verb

digest (third-person singular simple present digests, present participle digesting, simple past and past participle digested)

  1. (transitive) To distribute or arrange methodically; to work over and classify; to reduce to portions for ready use or application.
    • to digest laws
    Synonyms:
    arrange, sort, sort out
  2. (transitive) To separate (the food) in its passage through the alimentary canal into the nutritive and nonnutritive elements; to prepare, by the action of the digestive juices, for conversion into blood; to convert into chyme.
    • In the morning giue them [horses] barley or prouender, a little at a time in diſtinct or ſeueral portions, tvvice or thrice one after another, ſo as he may chevv and eke diſgeſt it thoroughly, othervviſe if he rauen it, as he vvil do hauing much at a time, he rendreth it in his dung vvhole and not...1607, Conradus Gesnerus [i.e., Conrad Gessner]; Edward Topsell, “Of Handling, Taming, or Breaking of Horsses”, in The Historie of Foure-footed Beastes. […], London: […] William Iaggard, →OCLC, page...
  3. (transitive) To think over and arrange methodically in the mind; to reduce to a plan or method; to receive in the mind and consider carefully; to get an understanding of; to comprehend.
    • Feelingly digest the words you speak in prayer.1566, Henry Sidney, letter to Philip Sidney
    Synonyms:
    sort out
  4. To bear comfortably or patiently; to be reconciled to; to brook.
    • I never can digest the loss of most of Origen's works.1834, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Table Talk - Toleration-Norwegians
  5. (transitive) To expose to a gentle heat in a boiler or matrass, as a preparation for chemical operations.
  6. (intransitive) To undergo digestion.
    • I just ate an omelette and I'm waiting for it to digest.

See all 15 meanings of digest

Forms of disgest

third-person singular presentdisgests
present participledisgesting
past participledisgested
pastdisgested

Origin of disgest

Corruption of digest, influenced by dis- and chest in the mistaken belief that it refers to food moving from the chest to the intestine.

Questions about disgest

What is disgest the obsolete form of?
Disgest is the obsolete form of digest.

Words near disgest in the dictionary

  1. disgavelling
  2. disgavels
  3. disgenic
  4. disgerminoma
  5. disgerminomas
  6. disgest
  7. disgested
  8. disgesting
  9. disgestion
  10. disgestions
  11. disgests

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: disgest (page history and authors); digest (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “disgest.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/disgest. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.