cerebrate

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   to think deliberately and at length; to use one's brain (often used half-jokingly of visible mental effort)

   He sat by the window for an hour, cerebrating over a single line of the proof.

2. 2
   verb

   to work something out mentally; to arrive at by thinking rather than by instinct

   Whatever plan she cerebrated on the train, she kept it to herself.

A back-formation from cerebration, a word coined in 1853 by the physiologist William Carpenter for the brain's unconscious work; cerebration itself is from Latin cerebrum ("brain"), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱer- ("head, horn"), the root behind horn and cranium. Because the verb was reverse-engineered from a technical noun, it has always carried a faintly laboured, mock-scientific flavour: to cerebrate is to think conspicuously.

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External links

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