rumination

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The act of pondering; meditation.
2. n. The act or process of chewing cud.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The act or process of ruminating, or chewing the cud. The food of ruminants is entirely herbaceous, and consists chiefly of grass. This is rapidly cropped by grazing, and hastily swallowed, mixed with saliva. When its appetite is satisfied, the ruminant stands still, or oftener lies down, generally on its side. Then occurs a spasmodic action of the abdominal muscles and of the diaphragm, like a hiccup, which forces a bolus of grass, sodden in the fluids of the paunch, up the gullet and into the mouth, to be masticated or chewed at leisure. During this second chewing the cud is mixed with more saliva, thoroughly ground to pulp, and in this semi-fluid state it is finally swallowed. The cropped grass, when first swallowed, passes indifferently into either the rumen or the reticulum (which are in fact only two compartments of the cardiac division of the stomach, the gullet entering the stomach just at their junction), and in the ordinary peristaltic action of the stomach the fodder passes back and forth from one to the other. But there is an arrangement of muscular folds by means of which a canal may be formed that leads directly from the gullet past the rumen and reticulum into the psalterium, and by this channel the food, when returned after the rumination, may be conducted directly to the third stomach. Water drunk passes easily into any of the four stomachs according to circumstances. Neither the paunch nor the honeycomb is ever completely emptied of food; they have been found partly filled with sodden fodder in animals which have starved to death. It does not appear, as has been supposed, that the reticulum is specially concerned in modeling the boluses which are to be regurgitated. The regurgitation is effected by the reversed peristaltic action of the gullet. During the spasmodic action by which the sodden mass is driven against the opening of the gullet, and some of it forced into the gullet to be thrown up, it is prevented from passing into the psalterium partly by the narrowness of the opening between the reticulum and the psalterium, and partly by the resistance offered to the coarse mass by the close-pressed psalterial leaves or layers, which act like a fine grating. But when the mass is swallowed again in its now pulpifled and semifluid state, and is directed to the psalterium by the conformation of the parts, it readily soaks in through the psalterial layers, and thus reaches the abomasum or fourth stomach, where it is finally chymified by the action of the gastric juice, to which it is not before subjected. Rumination in man, when it is pathological, is also called merycism.
2. n. The act of ruminating or meditating; a musing or continued thinking on a subject; meditation or reflection.

Wiktionary

1. n. The act of ruminating; i.e. chewing cud and other ruminants.
2. n. figuratively Deep thought or consideration.
3. n. psychology Negative cyclic thinking; persistent and recurrent worrying or brooding.
4. n. pathology An eating disorder characterized by repetitive regurgitation of small amounts of food from the stomach.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The act or process of ruminating, or chewing the cud; the habit of chewing the cud.
2. n. The state of being disposed to ruminate or ponder; deliberate meditation or reflection.
3. n. (Physiol.) The regurgitation of food from the stomach after it has been swallowed, -- occasionally observed as a morbid phenomenon in man.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. (of ruminants) chewing (the cud)
2. n. a calm, lengthy, intent consideration
3. n. regurgitation of small amounts of food; seen in some infants after feeding