Regurgitating

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. It involves both physical ejection of ingested matter and mental repetition of learned material
2. The process entails expelling previously consumed food from the stomach while also encompassing the repetition or rephrasing of information without any personal insights
3. To force food that has been swallowed back out of the stomach through the mouth ; to recite or echo information without adding new understanding

Etymology: "Regurgitating" is the present participle of "regurgitate," and the verb ultimately comes from a Latin image of water. Its root, "gurges," meant a whirlpool, gulf, or abyss, and the Latin verb "gurgitare" meant to engulf or flood. Add the prefix "re-," meaning "back," and you get the sense of something being thrown back up out of a swirling mass, which is exactly how the stomach's contents return to the mouth. The Latin roots were not doing medical work. The word's bodily meaning comes from the English use of the verb, with the physical sense of throwing something back out of the stomach already present in the Latin past participle "regurgitatus." Its watery origin is easy to miss today, since the whirlpool sense has faded almost entirely from common use, leaving only the gut-level meaning in everyday speech.

Synonyms: vomiting, bringing up