Other forms: distilled, distilling, distils
To distil is to purify by boiling and condensing, or to reduce to the essence. Distil the argument.
It works because different liquids boil at different temperatures and can be separated. To distil a report into one page is the figurative sense and the commoner one now.
1verbdistilTo purify by boiling and condensing, or to reduce to the essence.
“He distilled forty pages into a single paragraph.”
distil is an action.
Also accepted in games: distill
Latin destillare, to drip down, from stilla, a drop.
Proto-Indo-European
*dé
Latin
distīllāre
Old French
distiller
Middle English
distillen — to fall, flow, or shed in drops, drop, trickle; to shed drops; to fill (the eyes) with tears; (alchemy, medicine) to subject (something) to distillation; to obtain (something) using distillation; to distil; to condense or vaporize; (figuratively) to give (good fortune) to; to say (slanderous words)
English, today
distil
Built from
From Late Middle English distillen (“to fall, flow, or shed in drops, drop, trickle; to shed drops; to fill (the eyes) with tears; (alchemy, medicine) to subject (something) to distillation; to obtain (something) using distillation; to distil; to condense or vaporize; (figuratively) to give (good fortune) to; to say (slanderous words)”)destillen, destylle, distall, distill, distille, dystyll, from Old French distiller (modern French distiller (“to distil”)), and from its etymon Latin distīllāre, a variant of Latin dēstīllāre, the present active infinitive of dēstīllō (“to drip or trickle down; to distil”), from dē- + stīllō (“to drip, drop, trickle; to distil”) (from stīlla (“drop of liquid; (figuratively) small quantity”), probably a diminutive of stīria (“ice drop; icicle”)). 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA