To distill means to purify a liquid by heating it until it becomes vapor, then cooling that vapor back into liquid form. This process separates substances based on their different boiling points. When water is distilled, it's heated until it turns to steam, leaving impurities behind. The steam then cools back into pure water droplets.

The word also means to extract the most important parts of something. When you distill a long story down to its key points, you're keeping what matters most and leaving out unnecessary details. A teacher might ask you to distill a three-page report into one paragraph, capturing just the essential ideas. In this sense, distilling is about concentration and clarity: taking something complex or lengthy and reducing it to its purest, most meaningful form.