Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive & transitive verb To undergo thickening or cause to thicken, as by boiling or evaporation; condense.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To thicken, as a fluid, by evaporation; bring to greater consistence by evaporation.
  • Thick; inspissated.

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

  • transitive verb To thicken or bring to greater consistence, as fluids by evaporation.
  • adjective Thick or thickened; inspissated.

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

  • verb transitive To thicken, especially by boiling, evaporation, or condensation; condense.
  • verb intransitive To become viscous.

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

  • verb make viscous or dense
  • verb become thick or thicker
  • verb make thick or thicker

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From Late Latin īnspissāre, īnspissāt-, to thicken : Latin in-, causative pref.; see in– + Latin spissus, thick.]

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Examples

Comments

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  • it sounds more vulgar than it is, folks!

    February 17, 2007

  • Indeed! It's on my "Not Quite As Awful As They Sound" list! :-)

    February 17, 2007

  • Yeah, sometimes I make white sauce and have to wait for it to inspissate.

    Eeew. That does sound gross.

    February 21, 2007

  • Wow. And then you *eat* it?

    February 21, 2007

  • "Letting citizens sue polluters ... would only inspissate the logjam of litigation." (The New York Times, August 5, 1985)

    August 14, 2007

  • It sounds like it should mean "to piss off". BTW Roget (via Bartleby) says a synonym is incrassate.

    June 27, 2008