Meaning & use
digest
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Meanings
verbtransitive or intransitive
To break food down inside the body so that nutrients can be taken in.
Grammar: Takes an object (digest lunch) or stands alone (food digests slowly).
Patterns
- digest something
It takes several hours to digest a heavy meal.
Some babies cannot digest cow's milk properly.
Rest for a while and let your food digest.
verbtransitivefigurative
To take in and fully understand a piece of information, news, or an idea by thinking about it.
Grammar: Always has an object, usually information or news: digest the report.
Patterns
- digest something
- take time to digest something
I need a day to digest the contract before I sign it.
The audience was still digesting the shocking news.
It is hard to digest so many facts in one lecture.
nouncountable
A short summary or collection of longer writings, or a magazine that presents such summaries.
Grammar: Pronounced with stress on the first syllable as a noun: a news digest.
Patterns
- a digest of something
She subscribes to a weekly digest of science news.
The legal team produced a digest of all the earlier rulings.
I only had time to read the daily digest.
Word forms
| third person singular | digests |
|---|---|
| past tense | digested |
| past participle | digested |
| -ing form | digesting |
Common combinations
- digest food
- Fiber helps the body digest food more steadily.
- easy to digest
- Plain rice is easy to digest when you are unwell.
- digest information
- Students need time to digest new information.
- digest the news
- She went for a walk to digest the news.
- hard to digest
- The report was long and hard to digest.
- weekly digest
- The weekly digest arrives in my inbox every Friday.
Synonyms and how they differ
- absorb
- Absorb stresses taking something in, while digest implies working through it step by step.
- assimilate
- Assimilate is more formal and suggests making new knowledge part of what you already know.
- process
- Process is a broad modern word, often used for emotions or data, but it does not carry the food image of digest.
- summary
- As a noun, summary is a plain shortened account, while digest suggests a collection of condensed pieces.
Word family
- digestion noun
- the process of breaking down food in the body
- digestive adjective
- relating to digestion
- digestible adjective
- able to be digested or understood easily
- indigestion noun
- pain or discomfort after eating
- undigested adjective
- not yet broken down or understood
Commonly confused: digest or disgust? digest or digress?
digest vs disgust
Disgust is a strong feeling of dislike, and it only looks similar in spelling; it does not mean to process food or information.
digest vs digress
Digress means to wander away from the main subject while talking or writing.
Practice
After the long meeting, Priya needed an evening to ___ everything she had heard.
Choose one answer.
Digest is used figuratively to mean take in and understand information. The other verbs are real words but do not fit the meaning.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “digest”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.