Embarrassing fact I learned very recently: the verb "to ruminate" has two common meanings.ru·mi·nate
- Think deeply about something: "we sat ruminating on the nature of existence".
- (of a ruminant) Chew the cud.
I learned this about 6 months ago when my husband asked me what I was doing, and I said I was ruminating. He said, "Oh, like a ruminant?" I thought he was pulling my leg, because he frequently does that, often by making up fake words that are derivatives of real ones, and because I had never even heard the term "ruminant" before.
But, as it turns out, he was teasing me with entirely factual information that time. I didn't believe him until I looked it up on Google. For the record, he was calling me a cow, not a contemplative person. ru·mi·nant
- An even-toed ungulate mammal that chews the cud regurgitated from its rumen. The ruminants comprise the cattle, sheep, antelopes, deer, giraffes, and their relatives
- A contemplative person; a person given to meditation