English

Verb

masticate ‎(third-person singular simple present masticates, present participle masticating, simple past and past participle masticated)

1. (transitive) To chew (food).

   The cow stood, quietly masticating its cud.

2. (transitive) To grind or knead something into a pulp.

Quotations

• 1832 — Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, ch. 4

  The fat boy rose, opened his eyes, swallowed the huge piece of pie he had been in the act of masticating when he last fell asleep, and slowly obeyed his master’s orders.

• 1892 — Herman Melville, Typee: A Romance of the South Seas, ch. 12

  'By tasting it, to be sure,' said I, masticating a morsel that Kory-Kory had just put in my mouth.

• 1896 — H. G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau, ch. 8

  He resumed his meal. "I had no idea of it," he said, and masticated.

• 1927-1929— Mahatma Gandhi, An Autobiography or The Story of my Experiments with Truth, translated 1940 by Mahadev Desai

  The vegetables were not to be cooked but merely grated fine, if I could not masticate them.

• 2001 - Nadine Gordimer, The Pickup

  The friends watch the two make their way between other habitué's masticating, drinking, crouched in a scrum of conversation...

Translations

See also

• mastic
• masticable
• mastication
• masticator
• masticatory

Anagrams

• catamites

Interlingua

Participle

masticate

1. past participle of masticar

Italian

Verb

masticate

1. second-person plural present of masticare

Participle

masticate

1. feminine plural of the past participle of masticare

Anagrams

• mesticata

Latin

Verb

masticāte

1. second-person plural present active imperative of masticō