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Glite Dictionary
🤔 Careful thinking 🤢 Food regurgitation 🐄 Chewing cud
rumination

rumination

8.1
Animals like cows chew food again to help digest it
  • noun
  • /ˌruːməˈneɪʃən/
  • Specialized
translation icon : ruminación
  • During rumination, sheep chew their food again to extract more nutrients from their diet.

Examples

  • Cows engage in rumination by repeatedly chewing their cud to help digest the grass they eat.

  • The largest part of particle size reduction happens by chewing during ingestion and rumination (McLeod and Minson, 1988).

    Academic text (2015)

  • After grazing, the goats settled down for rumination, chewing their food thoroughly to aid digestion.

Surface Forms

rumination singular
ruminations plural

Morphology

rumination = ruminate (transparent) = ruminate + ion

Direct nominalization of the verb 'ruminate' describing the process of chewing cud; meaning is the expected action denoted by the verb.

Etymology

The word rumination comes from the Latin ruminare, 'to chew the cud'. It describes what cows and sheep do when they bring up food to chew it again to help digestion.