coction

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin coctio, coctionis.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈkɒkʃən/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Noun

coction (plural coctions)

1. (obsolete) An act of boiling.
2. (medicine, obsolete) Digestion.
3. (archaic or historical) The change which the humoralists believed morbific matter undergoes before elimination.
   • 1686 (indicated as 1685–1686), Robert Boyle, “A Free Inquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature: […]”, in The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle. […], volume IV, London: […] A[ndrew] Millar, […], published 1744, →OCLC, section VI, page 396:

     But it is found by ſad experience, that ſhe rouſes herſelf up to make a criſis, not only upon improper, and, as phyſicians call them, intercident days, […] vvhich ſeldom afford any criſis, and much ſeldomer a good one; but alſo vvhen there appear not any ſigns of coction, or at leaſt of due coction, and by theſe unſeaſonable attempts vveaken the patient, and increaſe the malady, or perhaps make it ſpeedily mortal.

   • 1697, John Pechey, A Plain Introduction to the Art of Physick, ... to which is added the Materia Medica contracted, and alphabetical tables of the vertues of roots, etc, page 111:

     A yellow Urine is caused by a due Concoction of the Chyle with the Blood. A red Urine is made by the Mixture of Blood with it, or by a greater Coction.

   • 1858, Thomas Alexander Wise, Essay on the Pathology of the Blood and Its Containing Vessels, page 2:

     The body again was considered as a microcosm, formed of four humours, — the blood, lymph, bile, and atrabile, […] and the terms crudity, coction, and evacuation of the morbific matter, were used to express such supposed changes.

   • 2014 July 10, A.Rupert Hall, The Revolution in Science 1500 - 1750, Routledge, →ISBN, page 154:

     The second coction was the sanguification of this chyle within the liver itself. In the peripheral parts blood was in the third coction made flesh. The coctions were promoted by the animal heat (hence the term) and in the sixteenth century writers  […]

Derived terms

• recoction

 

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “coction”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

Anagrams

• oncotic