Something regurgitated has typically been taken in, at least partially digested, and then spit back out—either literally or figuratively. The word often appears in biological contexts (e.g., in describing how some birds feed their chicks by regurgitating incompletely digested food) or in references to ideas or information that has been acquired and restated. A student, for example, might be expected to learn information from a textbook or a teacher and then regurgitate it for a test. Regurgitate, which entered the English vocabulary in the latter half of the 16th century, is of Latin origin and traces back to the Latin word for "whirlpool," which is gurges.