Verb

(en verb)

To modify.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-10, volume=408, issue=8848, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= A new prescription , passage=As the world's drug habit shows, governments are failing in their quest to monitor every London window-box and Andean hillside for banned plants. But even that Sisyphean task looks easy next to the fight against synthetic drugs. No sooner has a drug been blacklisted than chemists adjust their recipe and start churning out a subtly different one.}}

To improve or rectify.

* {{quote-magazine, title=Towards the end of poverty

, date=2013-06-01, volume=407, issue=8838, page=11, magazine=(The Economist) citation , passage=But poverty’s scourge is fiercest below $1.25 (the average of the 15 poorest countries’ own poverty lines, measured in 2005 dollars and adjusted for differences in purchasing power): people below that level live lives that are poor, nasty, brutish and short.}}

To settle an insurance claim.

To change to fit circumstances.

Verb

(deriv)

To obtain or receive (something) from something else.

* {{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=July-August, author= Sarah Glaz

, title= Ode to Prime Numbers , volume=101, issue=4, magazine=(American Scientist) , passage=Some poems, echoing the purpose of early poetic treatises on scientific principles, attempt to elucidate the mathematical concepts that underlie prime numbers. Others play with primes’ cultural associations. Still others derive their structure from mathematical patterns involving primes.}}

(logic) To deduce (a conclusion) by reasoning.

(linguistics) To find the derivation of (a word or phrase).

(chemistry) To create (a compound) from another by means of a reaction.

To originate or stem (from).

* {{quote-magazine, date=2012-01

, author=Robert M. Pringle, volume=100, issue=1, page=31, magazine=(American Scientist) , title= How to Be Manipulative , passage=As in much of biology, the most satisfying truths in ecology derive from manipulative experimentation. Tinker with nature and quantify how it responds.}}

To turn the course of (water, etc.); to divert and distribute into subordinate channels.

* (and other bibliographic details) Holland

For fear it [water] choke up the pitsthey [the workman] derive it by other drains.