regurgitate
Americanverb (used without object)
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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)
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(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
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has been regurgitatingperfect progressive
Past
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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:
It can also be passed directly to chicks when adults regurgitate food.
From BBC ● Apr. 9, 2026
Several exhibitors regurgitate the ideas of other, better-known artists.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 6, 2026
Traditional media face threats from chatbots and Google's AI overviews, which regurgitate content without users visiting original sites, eroding traffic and revenue.
From Barron's ● Nov. 26, 2025
“I just like to soak it in and regurgitate it in my own demented way,” he says.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 29, 2025
The best they could be expected to do was regurgitate.
From "Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team, And A Dream" by H.G. Bissinger
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
Programming that simply regurgitates what people already see, hear, and believe in their own lives is not, by any definition, “news” or even new.
From Slate ● Jan. 5, 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 rumen, and the food is passed into the abomasum for water removal and then into the small and large intestines for nutrient and further water absorption.
From Textbooks ● Jun. 9, 2022
He coughs a deep cough and regurgitates something into the bag.
From "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston
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
"We voted for the second time last week and turned down their regurgitated offer, but the minister came back this week with a few more empty promises," one said.
From BBC ● Apr. 4, 2025
The train seemed to plunge downhill now, only to lunge to a stop that shot me out upon a platform feeling like something regurgitated from the belly of a frantic whale.
From "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison
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
Instead of listening to boring lectures regurgitating scientific papers they’d already read, why not present video footage?
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 25, 2024
OpenAI’s generative language tool ChatGPT has proven to be effective at regurgitating hackneyed cultural motifs back at its users, which makes it perfect for the platitudinal terrain of BuzzFeed quizzes.
From Slate ● Apr. 12, 2023
An alternative hunger-fighting technique was to imitate cows, regurgitating a recent meal and eating it again.
From "Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West" by Blaine Harden
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.
