Word.ws English Dictionary

chewing the cud

chewing the cud is the present participle and gerund of chew the cud.

Meaning of chew the cud

Verb

chew the cud (third-person singular simple present chews the cud, present participle chewing the cud, simple past and past participle chewed the cud)

  1. To ruminate (of ruminant animals).
  2. (figuratively, idiomatic) To meditate or ponder before answering; to be deep in thought; to ruminate.
    • chewed the thrice turned cud of wrath1847, Alfred Tennyson, “(please specify the page number, or |part=Prologue, I to VII, or conclusion)”, in The Princess: A Medley, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC

Questions about chewing the cud

What is chewing the cud the present participle and gerund of?
Chewing the cud is the present participle and gerund of chew the cud.

Words near chewing the cud in the dictionary

  1. chewing over
  2. chewing sponge
  3. chewing sponges
  4. chewing stick
  5. chewing sticks
  6. chewing the cud
  7. chewing the fat
  8. chewing the meat and spitting out the bones
  9. chewing the scenery
  10. chewing tobacco
  11. chewing tobaccos

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chewing the cud (page history and authors); chew the cud (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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