Meaning & use
cud
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Meanings
noununcountablebiology
Food that a cow, sheep or similar animal brings back from its first stomach into its mouth to chew a second time.
Grammar: Uncountable and usually follows chew: the cow chewed its cud.
Patterns
- chew the cud
- chewing cud
The cows lay in the shade, slowly chewing their cud.
A healthy sheep spends hours each day chewing cud.
Farmers watch whether the herd is chewing cud as a sign of good health.
nouncountableold-fashionedregional
A lump of something kept in the mouth and chewed, such as tobacco.
Grammar: Countable and rare in this sense: a cud of tobacco.
Patterns
- a cud of tobacco
The old farmer kept a cud of tobacco in his cheek.
He spat out the cud before entering the church.
Common combinations
- chew the cud
- The cows stood in the field chewing the cud.
- chewing the cud
- He sat on the porch chewing the cud about his future.
- chew its cud
- A cow must chew its cud to digest tough grass.
- cud-chewing animals
- Cud-chewing animals such as goats have special stomachs.
- regurgitated cud
- The calf nibbled at the regurgitated cud its mother offered.
Synonyms and how they differ
Word family
- ruminant noun
- an animal such as a cow that chews cud
- ruminate verb
- to chew cud, or to think deeply about something
- rumination noun
- deep thought or the process of chewing cud
- cud-chewing adjective
- describing animals that chew cud
Commonly confused: cud or cub?
cud vs cub
A cub is a young bear, lion or fox. It differs from cud by one letter and has nothing to do with chewing.
Practice
If you say someone is chewing the cud, you often mean that they are ___.
Choose one answer.
Chewing the cud is used figuratively for slow, quiet thought, like a cow chewing. It does not mean eating quickly, arguing or fleeing.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “cud”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.