mastication

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“
In the next form in which this disease may develop it first becomes manifest by a difficulty in swallowing and slowness in mastication, and a weakness which may be first noticed in the strength of the tail; the animal will be unable to switch it or to offer resistance when we bend it up over the croup.

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Definitions (5)

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  1. The act of chewing; the process of triturating food with the teeth; manducation.
  2. The process of tearing to pieces or kneading, as india-rubber, by means of the masticator.
  3. Muscles of mastication the muscles specially concerned in the act of chewing, being those by whose action the lower jaw is moved upward and sidewise. They constitute a special group of muscles, deriving their innervation from the motor filaments of the trigeminus nerve. In man these muscles are the temporalis, masseter, and external and internal pterygoid.

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Examples (50)

  • Never had they witnessed such power of mastication, and such marvellous capacity of stomach, as in this native and uncultivated gastronome. —  The Adventures of Captain Bonneville
  • Hence the word mastication. just now, -0 / +1Just like some vegetarians will claim meat stays in your stomach for months. —  digg.com: Stories / Popular
  • Your dry bread is weary mastication, and your potted anchovies have a somewhat too stinging flavour; but taken together, sandwich-fashion, as they are here, the consumption may go on rapidly enough But, whether dry or not, the letters and speeches of Cromwell should be read by every one desirous of obtaining an insight into the character of not the least extraordinary, nor the least misrepresented personage in history. —  Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847
  • In the next form in which this disease may develop it first becomes manifest by a difficulty in swallowing and slowness in mastication, and a weakness which may be first noticed in the strength of the tail; the animal will be unable to switch it or to offer resistance when we bend it up over the croup. —  Special Report on Diseases of the Horse
  • This kind of meat panada is well adapted as a nutritious and easily-digested kind of food for old people who have lost the power of mastication, and also for very young children No. —  A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes
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Etymologies (1)

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  1. =F.mastication = Spanish masticacion = Portuguese mastigação = Italian masticazione, from Middle Latin *masticatio(n-), from Late Latin masticare, chew: see masticate.
 

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