regurgitate
Americanverb (used without object)
-
regurgitates,
present (3rd person singular)
-
regurgitated,
past participle, past
-
regurgitating
present participle
verb (used with object)
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regurgitates,
present (3rd person singular)
-
regurgitated,
past participle, past
-
regurgitating
present participle
-
to cause to surge or rush back; vomit.
-
to give back or repeat, especially something not fully understood or assimilated.
to regurgitate the teacher's lectures on the exam.
verb
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to vomit forth (partially digested food)
-
(of some birds and certain other animals) to bring back to the mouth (undigested or partly digested food with which to feed the young)
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(intr) to be cast up or out, esp from the mouth
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(intr) med (of blood) to flow backwards, in a direction opposite to the normal one, esp through a defective heart valve
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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regurgitatesimple
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regurgitatessimple
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have regurgitatedperfect
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has regurgitatedperfect
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am regurgitatingprogressive
-
are regurgitatingprogressive
-
is regurgitatingprogressive
-
have been regurgitatingperfect progressive
-
has been regurgitatingperfect progressive
Past
-
regurgitatedsimple
-
had regurgitatedperfect
-
was regurgitatingprogressive
-
were regurgitatingprogressive
-
had been regurgitatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of regurgitate
1645–55; < Medieval Latin regurgitātus (past participle of regurgitāre ), equivalent to re- re- + gurgit-, stem of gurges whirlpool, flood, stream + -ātus -ate 1
Explanation
To regurgitate is to bring already swallowed food back up through one's throat and out the mouth. Not so nice in humans, but much more understandable (if still gross) in birds — who feed their baby chicks by regurgitating. Finished cramming for your exam? Ready to do a data dump? Then you're about to regurgitate all you've learned — repeat information verbatim without any real understanding or analysis of it. Don't worry, everyone does it, from high school and college students, to grown-ups in corporate boardrooms.
Vocabulary lists containing regurgitate
Freak the Mighty
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The Stars Beneath Our Feet
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The Hot Zone
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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.
See Examples For:
AI matchmaking users have complained about limited prospect pools, generic descriptions of potential matches, and chatbots that simply regurgitate their preferences.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 3, 2026
It isn’t enough for him to regurgitate all this bad history that’s been totally debunked, or to present this tendentious theory of the Constitution as though it’s obviously correct.
From Slate ● Jul. 7, 2026
Too much of modern life is dominated by machines that can only regurgitate what has come before, says Bienvenu.
From Barron's ● Mar. 5, 2026
“I just like to soak it in and regurgitate it in my own demented way,” he says.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 29, 2025
I will need these words later, when I have to regurgitate them for exams, so I attempt to write them in my notebook, bending my head down close to the paper in order to see.
From "Cat's Eye" by Margaret Atwood
Gibson often regurgitates messages from personal finance and investing books that he reads, or from YouTube videos he watches about finance for beginners.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 16, 2026
The 1995 Korean War Veterans Memorial is centered on figurative sculptures; the 2004 World War II Memorial regurgitates classical architectural banalities — arches, pylons and wreaths — on a scale worthy of Albert Speer.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 16, 2022
The ruminant regurgitates cud from the reticulum, chews it, and swallows it into a third stomach, the omasum, which removes water.
From Textbooks ● Jun. 9, 2022
The movie is just a big, empty declaration of corporate dominance, a whirling CGI tornado that — like a much stupider Tasmanian Devil — ingests, barely processes and then promptly regurgitates everything in its path.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 15, 2021
He coughs a deep cough and regurgitates something into the bag.
From "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston
Jason Aten, a tech columnist at Inc. magazine, reported that his Muse read and regurgitated his private messages even though he believed he had denied it that capability.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 2, 2026
The New York Times cut ties with a freelance book critic who admitted that an A.I. editing tool had regurgitated passages from a Guardian article into his draft.
From Slate ● Apr. 17, 2026
Watching AI-generated content, which is regurgitated again and again, fed to a zombie audience that no longer cares.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 23, 2026
If “Christy” is Sweeney’s message through art, it may as well be the cinematic equivalent of “Dogs Playing Poker,” an image so often remixed and regurgitated that it’s devoid of any compelling meaning.
From Salon ● Nov. 8, 2025
The floor was entirely covered in straw, owl droppings, and the regurgitated skeletons of mice and voles.
From "Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire" by J. K. Rowling
She argued it risked regurgitating yesterday's arguments with little prospect of success.
From BBC ● Oct. 13, 2026
With movies like “Obsession” and “Backrooms” already dominating the early-summer box office, the industry is rethinking its iron-grip commitment to regurgitating the same films audiences have seen 100 times before, in slightly different ways.
From Salon ● Jun. 10, 2026
Does being faithful mean regurgitating an author’s words?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 20, 2025
McVay refrained from regurgitating any such nonsense when speaking at the team hotel on the eve of training camp.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 25, 2023
Then he’d taken cover behind an ice sculpture and focused on the miserable task of regurgitating the packets of Wylan’s root bombs he’d swallowed before they’d ambushed the prison wagon.
From "Six of Crows" by Leigh Bardugo
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
