Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Of, relating to, or used in mastication: masticatory muscles.
- adj. Adapted for chewing.
- n. A medicinal substance chewed to increase salivation.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Relating or pertaining to mastication; used in or effected by chewing: as, the masticatory apparatus or process.
- n. A substance chewed to excite the secretion of saliva.
Wiktionary
- n. Something chewed, originally as a medicine, now typically for pleasure or to increase the flow of saliva.
- adj. Of, or relating to mastication.
- adj. Used for chewing.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Chewing; adapted to perform the office of chewing food.
- n. (Med.) A substance to be chewed to increase the saliva.
Etymologies
- From the participle stem of Latin masticare. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Its small grinding teeth suggest it had only weak masticatory muscles for chewing food, and probably tucked into soft vegetation, fruit and squidgy aquatic plants in deltas, the experts say.”
“I can see them offering us a big tentacle, yes, right in the masticatory orifice!”
“Scientists were selectively breeding the foxes to be tame but suddenly found their tamest foxes had developed many of the traits found in dogs-- such as droopy ears, strange coat colors, decreased skull size in comparison to the wild-type, a decrease in tooth size and an overall reduction of the entire masticatory bone structure.”
Because when it comes down to it, we're all Russian foxes, my friend.
“The guinea-pig has teeth which are shed before it is born, and hence can never subserve the masticatory purpose for which they seem contrived, and, in like manner, the female dugong has tusks which never cut the gum.”
“I told them to stuff it down their masticatory orifices.”
“One of the bums had his right arm put out of joint, and the other his upper jaw-bone or mandibule dislocated so that it hid half his chin, with a denudation of the uvula, and sad loss of the molar, masticatory, and canine teeth.”
Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel
“Clearly defined sutures in the skullcap and overall thickness of the cranial bones suggested that the person was a young adult, and, with highly developed masticatory muscles, most likely male.”
“You've put your truleg in your masticatory orifice.”
“Another important masticatory is the tobacco quid with its ingredients of lime and _máu-mau_ juice.”
The Manóbos of Mindanáo Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir
“There are sometimes added to this masticatory certain other aromatic ingredients, such as cinnamon, lemon rind, and other things.”
The Manóbos of Mindanáo Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘masticatory’.
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Consider the Lobster
By David Foster Wallace
percussive, discursive, lugubrious, docent, assiduously, berm, wag, bonmot, imbroglio, telegraph, fissile, rube and 220 more...
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epeolatrist's list
epeolatry, syzygy, sphallolalia, lucubration, lugubrious, cacology, mellifluous, tmesis, synecdoche, anathema, eschatological, razbliuto and 349 more...
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Words that sound naughtier than they are
cunctation, crapulous, fecund, masticatory, frigate, absquatulate, flagellate, penal, titular, peen, funicular, clitic and 5 more...
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