Regurgitates

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Ejects swallowed food back through the mouth ; repeats facts or ideas without comprehension or original thought
2. Throws up partially digested food from the stomach ; mechanically copies or recites information without processing it
3. Expels ingested material orally after swallowing ; parrots data or statements without personal insight or analysis

Etymology: "Regurgitates" is the third-person singular form of "regurgitate", so the story belongs to the verb itself. The root is a Latin image of water: "gurges" meant a whirlpool, gulf or abyss, the kind of churning deep water that swallows things. From it came "gurgitare", "to engulf or flood", and the prefix "re-" ("back") was attached to make "regurgitare", to flood back up. Latin speakers used the picture of a whirlpool throwing its contents back to the surface. The word reached English through Late Latin, in the form "regurgitatus", and its sense stayed close to that image: something swallowed is forced back out, rising up like water from a whirlpool. The bodily meaning of vomiting is the most familiar sense today, but the same verb is also used figuratively for repeating facts or ideas without digesting them, which keeps the original sense of pushing back what was taken in.

Synonyms: releases, discharges, vomits, ejects, spits

Antonyms: ingests, absorbs, swallows, consumes, takes in