ruminant

UK/ˈɹuːmɪnənt/US/ˈɹuːmɪnənt/

nounC2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #15,175 of 15,258Too rare in one of the two pools to compare — fewer than 20 uses in speech or in writing

Other forms: ruminants

A ruminant is an animal that chews food brought back from its stomach. Cattle are ruminants.

It has several stomach chambers and can live on grass, which almost nothing else digests. A ruminant is why grassland can feed people at all, and why it produces so much methane.

Definitions of ruminant

1nounruminantAn animal that chews food brought back from its stomach.C2
“A ruminant spends about eight hours a day chewing.”

ruminant is an animal.

Where it comes from

Latin ruminare, to chew the cud, from rumen, the throat or first stomach.

Latin
rūmināns
English, today
ruminant

Built from

ruminor · Latin — to chew the cud, ruminate
rūmen · Latin — throat, gullet, rumen (first stomach of a ruminant)

From Latin rūmināns, present participle of ruminor (“to chew the cud, ruminate”), from rūmen (“throat, gullet, rumen (first stomach of a ruminant)”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

ruminant in the wild

The roughly 200 species of ruminants include both domestic and wild species.
Ruminant
Sheep (Ovis aries) are quadrupedal, ruminant mammals that are typically kept as livestock.
Sheep (disambiguation)
An example of a ruminant and avian are cattle and chickens.
Monogastric
Dictyocaulus arnfieldi is the lungworm of horses, and Dictyocaulus viviparus is the lungworm affecting ruminants.
Dictyocaulus
The rumen, also known as a paunch, is the largest stomach compartment in ruminants.
Rumen

1 / 2

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the ruminor family

ruminate ruminant

ruminant — used about once every 159,543 pages · #15,175 · point at the bar for the others

← Vocabulary