: to throw or pour back or out from or as if from a cavity
regurgitate food
memorized facts to regurgitate on the exam
Did you know?
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.
Example Sentences
The bird regurgitates to feed its young. The bird regurgitates food to feed its young. She memorized the historical dates only to regurgitate them on the exam. The speaker was just regurgitating facts and figures.
Recent Examples on the WebAnd then mainstream white artists looked upon disco as just a field from which to pluck inspiration and basically regurgitate it. Ken Makin, The Christian Science Monitor, 18 July 2022 Don’t use the old wives’ tales of heating it with a match or drowning it with petroleum jelly or mayonnaise — if anything, that could cause the tick to regurgitate into the wound and pass along further bacteria. Sarah Bowman, The Indianapolis Star, 31 May 2022 At the same time, if a replay review is butchered in New York, the poor crew chief on the field can do nothing more but regurgitate the error. Gabe Lacques, USA TODAY, 11 Apr. 2022 But whenever Haddonfield citizens regurgitate stock-like ultimatums about the end of their suffering as a society, these words are nothing more than a testament to how much of a projection Michael Myers's evil nature can be. Joey Nolfi, EW.com, 9 Sep. 2021 Ninth-century Muslim travel writers proposed that whales likely consume a substance produced elsewhere and later regurgitate it, a view that remained in circulation for several centuries.Smithsonian Magazine, 2 Sep. 2021 One of the patients has the power to regurgitate acid.Los Angeles Times, 17 Aug. 2021 The system can’t simply regurgitate verbatim code from the data used to train it, especially if that code is protected by copyright. Gregory Barber, Wired, 12 July 2021 Those methods have failed to make a tick detach and could also cause the tiny bloodsucker to regurgitate into the bite, causing other issues. Laura Schulte, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 30 June 2021 See More
Word History
Etymology
Medieval Latin regurgitatus, past participle of regurgitare, from Latin re- + Late Latin gurgitare to engulf, from Latin gurgit-, gurges whirlpool — more at voracious