Word of the Day

: February 11, 2025

ruminate

verb ROO-muh-nayt

What It Means

To ruminate is to think carefully and deeply about something.

// We ruminated over the implications of our decision.

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ruminate in Context

“Most of the songs bear the name of a store you’d see in every mall in the United States before they became sad ghost towns, air conditioning and smooth jazz blasting in the emptied, echoing caverns of capitalism. ... The trio uses nostalgia as a tool of examination, ruminating on the not-too-distant past in order to process the funny and sometimes heartbreaking process of getting older together.” — Dash Lewis, Pitchfork, 8 July 2024

Did You Know?

When you ruminate, you chew something over, either literally or figuratively. Literal rumination may seem a little gross to humans, but to cows, chewing your cud (partially digested food brought up from the stomach for another chew) is just a natural part of life. Figurative ruminating is much more palatable to humans; that kind of deep, meditative thought is often deemed quite a worthy activity. The verb ruminate has described metaphorical chewing over since the early 1500s and actual chewing since later that same century. Our English word comes from and shares the meanings of the Latin verb ruminari (“to chew the cud” or “muse upon”), which in turn comes from rumen, the Latin name for the first stomach compartment of ruminant animals (that is, creatures like cows that chew their cud).