Ah!
You know how everyone else understands everything, and then one day you catch up? Well, I'm not really talking about everything, I'm just talking about one thing. I now understand the word... ruminate. As in to think about things.
Ok, so I was reading this James Herriott book last night, and there was this really funny story about his partner doing surgery on a cow. And the goal was to remove a wire from the cow's reticulum. A reticulum is the cow's second stomach, so you have to cut into the first stomach to get to it.
The first stomach is called... the rumen.
As in, to ruminate. When a cow pulls its cud up to chew on, that's also called "to ruminate." Our human use is metaphorical!
In the story, the cow ruminates all over the guy doing the surgery, which is really funny. Actually, what really happens is that when he pierces the rumen all the pent up gas propels the ruminant like a hose all over the barn. But we humans just ruminate over different topics.
Topics like ruminant. I ruminate over ruminant!
posted by Possum @ 7.12.05
4 comments
4 Comments:
I think I already knew this once, but relearning things is fun, too.
Isn't that all we ever really do, anyway?
Nobody else knows that, Jon.
I had a similar epiphany when I realized why "movies" were called so.
But didn't you know that ruminate is metaphorical for cows chewing their cud?
I think that's what I knew: I didn't know that the rumen was the cow's first stomach. So I guess I did learn one new thing, anyway.
yeah, my similar word was "trampoline".
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