distillation

/ˌdɪstɪˈleɪʃən/
noun
  1. The process of heating a liquid to create a gas and then cooling it to create a liquid again, used to purify or separate substances.
    • In chemistry class, we learned about the distillation of alcohol from fermented fruit.
    • Distillation is used to produce clean drinking water from salt water.
    • The distillation of crude oil yields many useful products like gasoline and kerosene.
  2. The process of extracting the essential meaning or most important part of something.
    • Her novel is a distillation of her experiences traveling around the world.
    • The distillation of the long report into a one-page summary was a challenging task.
    • The movie is a distillation of the book's main themes, leaving out many subplots.
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