excogitate

And to speak generally, in regard of things celestial he set his face against attempts to excogitate the machinery by which the divine power formed its several operations.

From The Memorabilia by Henry Graham Dakyns

"Shall I to him"—Sister Margaret paused to excogitate the Yiddish word—"write?"

From Ghetto Tragedies by Israel Zangwill

Yet cause must be assigned, and the best form of words he could excogitate ran thus: 'Family circumstances render it desirable—almost necessary—that I should spend the next twelve months in London.

From Born in Exile by George Gissing

Pending her appearance, he filled the spirit-stove, put the kettle on to boil, and lighting a cigarette, sat himself down to watch the pot and excogitate his several problems.

From The Lone Wolf A Melodrama by Louis Joseph Vance

I wouldn't put the question to you for the world, and expose you to the inconvenience of having to—a— excogitate an answer.

From Washington Square by Henry James

Last month, having excogitated 290 questions and created perhaps the most elaborate thinking test ever devised, they stunned a group of the nation's smartest high-school graduates with it.

From Time Magazine Archive

Whoever it was, he must have excogitated the idea at a distance, and in some splenetic humour; it never could have entered through his eyesight standing here.

From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 61, No. 376, February, 1847 by Various

He rubbed the warm pipe bowl against his cheek and excogitated the matter in deep humility.

From Septimus by William John Locke

Was it likely that anything worth having would be excogitated by Milord Camillo, the greatest reactionary in the kingdom, the sworn foe of revolution, "un Anglomane pur sang?"

From Cavour by Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

It is strange that any two ministers could have excogitated so monstrous a proposition, and that both should be called "Divine."

From Ancient Faiths And Modern A Dissertation upon Worships, Legends and Divinities by Thomas Inman

It features essays by 22 scholars, all solemnly excogitating on such weighty matters as whether the horseshoes in his pictures are from dray horses or Thoroughbreds.

From Time Magazine Archive

It is a marvellous thing that they who engage in excogitating this kind of double-meaning literature about bimetallism, should suppose that the people can any longer be deluded with it.

From The Arena Volume 18, No. 93, August, 1897 by Various

Hence, too, it is that we hunt through the mental train, excogitating from the present or some other, and from similar or contrary or coadjacent.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Slice 7 "Arundel, Thomas" to "Athens" by Various

He set about excogitating an alphabet; but actually forgot to give names to his letters, which afterwards baffled him before literary men.

From Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 by Isaac Disraeli

An execrable Triumvirate—a scandalum magnatum to all public bodies: I suppose they and their adherents are now sitting in Pandemonium, excogitating their diabolical machinations against us.

From The Politician Out-Witted by Montrose Jonas Moses