What (who) is distil - definition
distil
(distils, distilling, distilled)
Note: in AM, use 'distill'
1.
If a liquid such as whisky or water is distilled, it is heated until it changes into steam or vapour and then cooled until it becomes liquid again. This is usually done in order to make it pure.
The whisky had been distilled in 1926 and sat quietly maturing until 1987...
You can't actually drink the water from the marshland. But you can distil it...
VERB: be V-ed, V n
• distillation
Any faults in the original cider stood out sharply after distillation.
N-UNCOUNT
2.
If an oil or liquid is distilled from a plant, it is produced by a process which extracts the most essential part of the plant. To distil a plant means to produce an oil or liquid from it by this process.
The oil is distilled from the berries of this small tree.
...the art of distilling rose petals...
VERB: be V-ed from n, V n
• distillation
...the distillation of rose petals to produce rosewater.
N-UNCOUNT: usu N of n
3.
If a thought or idea is distilled from previous thoughts, ideas, or experiences, it comes from them. If it is distilled into something, it becomes part of that thing.
Reviews are distilled from articles previously published in the main column...
Roy distills these messages into something powerful...
VERB: be V-ed from n, V n into n
• distillation
The material below is a distillation of his work.
N-SING: usu N of n
distil
v. (D; tr.) to distil from (to distil whiskey from grain)
distil
I. v. n.
[Written also Distill.] Drop, drip, trickle, dribble, fall in drops.
II. v. a.
[Written also Distill.]
1.
Drop, let fall in drops.
2.
Separate by evaporation, extract by heat.
3.
Extract spirit from.
Examples of use of distil
1. Set to music by Bartok, this work aims less to replicate the imagery of Lowry‘s art than to distil its essential aesthetic and energy.
2. Though Smith‘s company went into liquidation during the Depression, it was in fact hard times that would distil Britain‘s affection for crisps.
3. Another volume, Moving Britain Forward: Selected Speeches 1''7–2006, would contain 10 speeches that "distil the essence of his political vision for Britain in an age of globalisation", Bloomsbury said.
4. The Council‘s task is to distil the interests of the member states and approve, amend or reject proposed legislation in a process in which it usually shares power with the European parliament.
5. According to diplomats in Vienna, home of the International Atomic Energy Agency‘s headquarters, workers at Iran‘s Natanz nuclear facility have begun putting uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas into centrifuges used to distil enriched uranium.