New Word Wednesday #1

To complement my path to enlightenment - see Yogi post - I am introducing a new weekly post about words we may not hear often, I think sound funny, are interesting to me, or I simply don't know.

This week's word is cogitate. My boss' boss used it in a meeting the other day and my brain immediately went into rapid-fire-I-can't-listen-to-anything-being-said-because-my-pea-brain-is-questioning mode - what DOES that mean?, why don't I know that?, did he mean 'conjugate'?, did he just insult me? I pulled myself together, wrote it down and here my friends is where you benefit from my ignorance -

cog·i·tate
–verb (used without object)
1. to think hard; ponder; meditate: to cogitate about a problem.

–verb (used with object)
2. to think about; devise: to cogitate a scheme.

—Synonyms 1. deliberate, reflect. 2. weigh.