Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To bite and grind with the teeth; masticate.
  • intransitive verb To meditate on; ponder.
  • intransitive verb To make a crushing and grinding motion with the teeth.
  • intransitive verb To cogitate; meditate.
  • intransitive verb Informal To chew tobacco as a habit.
  • noun The act of chewing.
  • noun Something held in the mouth and chewed, especially a plug of tobacco.
  • idiom (chew the cud) To ponder over; meditate.
  • idiom (fat/rag) To talk together in a friendly, leisurely way; chat at length.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun That which is chewed; that which is held in the mouth at one time; especially, a quid of tobacco.
  • To bite and grind with the teeth; masticate, as food, preparatory to swallowing and digestion.
  • Figuratively, to ruminate on in the thoughts; meditate on.
  • Synonyms Bite, Gnaw, etc. See eat.
  • To perform the act of biting and grinding with the teeth; champ; ruminate. Specifically
  • To press or grind tobacco between the teeth for the sake of its flavor or stimulating effects.
  • Figuratively, to meditate; reflect.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To bite and grind with the teeth; to masticate.
  • transitive verb To ruminate mentally; to meditate on.
  • transitive verb to chew the food over again, as a cow; to ruminate; hence, to meditate.
  • noun Law That which is chewed; that which is held in the mouth at once; a cud.
  • intransitive verb To perform the action of biting and grinding with the teeth; to ruminate; to meditate.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A small sweet, such as a taffy, that is eaten by chewing.
  • noun informal, uncountable Chewing tobacco.
  • noun countable or uncountable A plug or wad of chewing tobacco; chaw or a chaw.
  • verb To crush with the teeth by repeated closing and opening of the jaws; done to food to soften it and break it down by the action of saliva before it is swallowed.
  • verb To grind, tear, or otherwise degrade or demolish something with teeth or as with teeth.
  • verb informal To think about something; to ponder; to chew over.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a wad of something chewable as tobacco
  • verb chew (food); to bite and grind with the teeth
  • noun biting and grinding food in your mouth so it becomes soft enough to swallow

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English cheuen, from Old English cēowan.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Middle English chewen, from Old English ċēowan, from Proto-Germanic *kewwanan, from Proto-Indo-European *ǵi̯euh₁- (compare Latin gingīva ("gums"), Tocharian B śuwaṃ ‘eat’, Polish żuję ("I chew"), Persian ǰāvīdan, Pashto žovạl ("to bite, gnaw")).

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Examples

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  • chewing studies.

    April 29, 2009

  • Means "salt" in Amharic.

    July 13, 2009