Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act of boiling in water, in order to extract the peculiar properties or virtues.
  • noun The liquor in which an animal or a vegetable substance has been boiled; water impregnated by boiling with the properties of such a substance: as, a decoction of Peruvian bark.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The act or process of boiling anything in a watery fluid to extract its virtues.
  • noun An extract got from a body by boiling it in water.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun an extraction or essence of something, obtained by boiling it down

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun (pharmacology) the extraction of water-soluble drug substances by boiling

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French décoction, from Latin decoctio, form of decoquō ("I boil down"), from de- + coquō.

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Examples

Comments

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  • "The liquor in which an animal or a vegetable substance has been boiled; water impregnated by boiling with the properties of such a substance: as, a decoction of Peruvian bark."

    --CD&C

    January 31, 2013

  • At last, something useful to do with dogs.

    January 31, 2013