Distilled

How to spell distilled

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce distilled

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does distilled mean?

1. verbPurified or concentrated a liquid by heating it to vapour and condensing the result.
2. adjectiveDescribing a liquid that has been purified or concentrated through distillation.
3. verbReduced something complex to its purest or most essential form.

Distilled in a sentence

• verb

  The small craft brewery distilled its own gin on site.

• adjective

  The iron should be filled only with distilled water to prevent limescale.

• verb

  The report distilled years of research into a single clear chart.

• verb

  The laboratory distilled the seawater to remove every trace of salt.

• adjective

  The recipe calls for two tablespoons of distilled white vinegar.

• verb

  Her advice distilled a lifetime of experience into one sentence.

Where does distilled come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb destillare, which literally meant 'to drip down' or 'to trickle down', built from the prefix de- 'down' and stilla, a noun meaning 'a drop' of liquid. Medieval alchemists adopted the term for the laboratory process of heating a liquid until it became vapour and then collecting the droplets that condensed and dripped from the apparatus. English took the word in during the 1300s by way of Old French distiller, and the everyday sense of purifying or extracting an essence grew naturally out of that image of liquid falling drop by drop. The same stilla root survives in the word 'still', the apparatus used to distil spirits, and even in 'instil', meaning to introduce something gradually as if drop by drop. The single L in the base and the doubled L in the ending catch many writers out, since the verb is spelled distil in British use and distill in American use, yet both settle on distilled.

How the word is built

• dis- (down, apart)
• still (from Latin stillare: to drip or trickle)
• -ed (past tense/participle)