ruminate

1. (intransitive) To chew cud. (Said of ruminants.) Involves regurgitating partially digested food from the rumen.Examples: "A camel will ruminate just as a cow will."; "There is surely some point beyond which the acquisition of other men’s thoughts must not be carried. This we say for the sake of those helluones librorum, who read forever and without stint; browsing as diligently as oxen in the green herbage of rich meads, but, unlike these, never lying down to ruminate. Life is too short, Art is too long, for a human mind to make perpetual accretion of book-learning, without halt. Sufflaminandum est."intransitive

2. (intransitive) To meditate or reflect.Examples: "I didn't answer right away because I needed to ruminate first."; "Yet do thou cherish thy Partner, whilst her innocent Eyes are gazing on the Green Garment, that covereth the Surface of her Illapidable Virginity, ruminating upon the Departure of her nearest and dearest Friend [...] In that Day, thee wilt see with the Eye of Flesh; but if thee pursues it farther, to know whether she be Lapidable, or not, thee art certainly a Tyrant: For the Hammer of thy Loins, will at length beat down the Fortress of her Porto Bello; and the Pillars of her Tabernace will be spread abroad, until thee hast plundered the City, and taken the Precious Stones away."; "In the present case, therefore, it now comes closer and closer, in thought, to the first finite; but before taking hold of it, and determining to explore it, the mind proposes, and ruminates, certain middle questions, touching the actual existence of a nexus, and the possibility there is, of discovering the nature, and quality of the nexus, which subsists between the cause, and the causate, or between the infinite, and the first finite."intransitive

3. (transitive) To meditate or ponder over; to muse on.Examples: "What I know / Is ruminated, plotted, and set down."; "Mad with desire, she ruminates her sin."; ""Good-by, my dear Belinda; I leave you to ruminate sweet and bitter thoughts; to think of the last speech and confession of Lady Delacour, or, what will interest you much more, the first speech and confession of—Clarence Harvey.""transitive