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 The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.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 “digest”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)
Etymology 1
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digest (third-person singular simple presentdigests, present participledigesting, simple past and past participledigested)
(transitive) To distribute or arrange methodically; to work over and classify; to reduce to portions for ready use or application.
to digest laws
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joining them together and digesting them into order
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We have cause to be glad that matters are so well digested.
(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.
(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.
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Feelingly digest the words you speak in prayer.
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How shall this bosom multiplied digest / The senate's courtesy?
(compilation of statutes or decisions analytically arranged): The term is applied in a general sense to the Pandects of Justinian, but is also specially given by authors to compilations of laws on particular topics.