mastication

English

Etymology

From Late Latin masticātiō, equivalent to masticate +‎ -ion.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /mæstɪˈkeɪʃən/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪʃən

Noun

mastication (countable and uncountable, plural mastications)

1. (physiology) The process of chewing.
   • 1918 September–November, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Land That Time Forgot”, in The Blue Book Magazine, Chicago, Ill.: Story-press Corp., →OCLC; republished as chapter V, in Hugo Gernsback, editor, Amazing Stories, part I, number 11, New York, N.Y.: Experimenter Publishing, February 1927, →OCLC, book I, page 1002:

     “It is no more blasphemous than that thing which is swiping our meat,” I replied, for whatever the thing was, it had leaped upon our deer and was devouring it in great mouthfuls which it swallowed without mastication. The creature appeared to be a great lizard at least ten feet high, with a huge, powerful tail as long as its torso, mighty hind legs and short forelegs.

2. The process of crushing as though chewed.

Derived terms

• demastication
• muscle of mastication
• premastication
• remastication

Related terms

• masticate
• masticatory

Translations

process of chewing

Bulgarian: дъвчене n (dǎvčene) Finnish: pureskelu (fi), mastikaatio French: mastication (fr) f German: Mastikation f Irish: cogaint f Italian: masticazione (it) f Japanese: 咀嚼 (ja) (soshaku) Portuguese: mastigação (pt) f Romanian: mestecare (ro) f, masticație (ro) f Spanish: masticación (es) f Ukrainian: жування n (žuvannja)

Anagrams

• aminostatic

French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /mas.ti.ka.sjɔ̃/

• Audio (France (Lyon)):

  (file)

Noun

mastication f (plural mastications)

1. mastication

Further reading

• “mastication”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.