digest
Definitions
General English
- verb to think about something and understand it fully
Agriculture
- verb to use bacteria to process waste, especially organic waste such as manure, in order to produce biogas
Food
- verb to break down food in the stomach and intestine and convert it into elements that can be absorbed by the body
Information & Library Science
- noun a book which summarises a series of reports, especially one that collects summaries of court decisions and is used as a reference tool by lawyers
Law
- noun a book which collects summaries of court decisions together, used for reference purposes by legal practitioners
Media Studies
- noun a compilation of articles or stories, originally from different sources, edited and brought together in a magazine, book or broadcast
Medical
- verb to break down food in the alimentary canal and convert it into components which are absorbed into the body
Origin & History of “digest”
English took the verb digest from dīgest-, the past participle of Latin dīgerere. this was a compound verb formed from the prefix dī- ‘apart’ and gerere ‘carry’, and originally meant ‘divide, distribute’ – a sense which developed via ‘dissolve’ into the specifically physiological ‘dissolve and obtain nutrients from food in the body’. A further semantic offshoot of ‘distribute’ was ‘orderly arrangement’, and in fact the earliest use of the word in English was as the noun digest ‘summary of information’ (14th c.), from Latin dīgesta, the neuter plural of the past participle, literally ‘things arranged’.
