ruminate
verb (used without object)
to meditate or muse; ponder.
had been ruminating
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past perfect progressiveof ruminate.past perfect progressive
Used to describe an action that was ongoing continuously in the past up until another past event interrupted it.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Hill had been ruminating about a tell-all book from the early stages of the trial, a clerk from a neighboring county who’d assisted her testified at an evidentiary hearing on the jury-tampering complaint.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 24, 2026
Q: How did you come up with the idea for “King of Joy”? Was it a flash-in-the-pan concept or something you had been ruminating on for a while?
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 29, 2019
There they approached writer Winnie Holzman about creating their next series, and when Herskovitz mentioned Secret/Seventeen, she “really sparked to it”, as she had been ruminating about her own adolescence.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 26, 2017
All night Tunis Latham, even while lying in his hammock in the forecastle, had been ruminating in anything but a cheerful mood.
From Sheila of Big Wreck Cove A Story of Cape Cod by R. Emmett (Robert Emmett) Owen
"But, look here," said Mr. Octagon, who had been ruminating; "if, as the doctor says, death was instantaneous, how could your aunt have rung the bell?"
From The Secret Passage by Fergus Hume
