digest

Etymology 1

From Middle English digesten, from Latin dīgestus, past participle of dīgerō (“carry apart”), from dī- (for dis- (“apart”)) + gerō (“I carry”), influenced by Middle French digestion. Partly displaced native Old English meltan (intransitive) and mieltan (transitive), both “to melt, to digest,” whence Modern English melt.

verb

1. (transitive) To distribute or arrange methodically; to work over and classify; to reduce to portions for ready use or application.
   to digest laws
   joining them together and digesting them into order 1783, Hugh Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres
2. (transitive) To separate (the food) in its passage through the alimentary canal into the nutritive and nonnutritive elements; to prepare, by the action of the digestive juices, for conversion into blood; to convert into chyme.
3. (transitive) To think over and arrange methodically in the mind; to reduce to a plan or method; to receive in the mind and consider carefully; to get an understanding of; to comprehend.
   Feelingly digest the words you speak in prayer. 1566, Henry Sidney, letter to Philip Sidney
4. To bear comfortably or patiently; to be reconciled to; to brook.
   I never can digest the loss of most of Origen's works. 1834, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Table Talk - Toleration-Norwegians
5. (transitive, chemistry) To expose to a gentle heat in a boiler or matrass, as a preparation for chemical operations.
6. (intransitive) To undergo digestion.
   I just ate an omelette and I'm waiting for it to digest.
7. (medicine, obsolete, intransitive) To suppurate; to generate pus, as an ulcer.
8. (medicine, obsolete, transitive) To cause to suppurate, or generate pus, as an ulcer or wound.
9. (obsolete, transitive) To ripen; to mature.
   well-digested fruits 1662, Jeremy Taylor, The Measures and Offices of Friendship
10. (obsolete, transitive) To quieten or reduce (a negative feeling, such as anger or grief)

Etymology 2

From Latin dīgesta, neuter plural of dīgestus, past participle of dīgerō (“separate”).

noun

1. That which is digested; especially, that which is worked over, classified, and arranged under proper heads or titles
2. A compilation of statutes or decisions analytically arranged; a summary of laws.
   Comyn's Digest
   the United States Digest
3. Any collection of articles, as an Internet mailing list including a week's postings, or a magazine arranging a collection of writings.
   Reader's Digest is published monthly.
   The weekly email digest contains all the messages exchanged during the past week.
4. (cryptography) The result of applying a hash function to a message.