- 1
Someone in a ruminative mood is thinking deeply and carefully, turning an idea over slowly, the way a cow turns grass over. It is a quiet, adjective. You will meet it in novels and essays more than in speech: a ruminative pause, a ruminative look out of the window. It does not have to mean sad, though it often arrives with a slightly serious face. It is close to thoughtful, but slower and more inside the head — not planning a shopping list, more chewing on a memory or a hard question. In psychology, rumination can mean getting stuck on dark thoughts; ruminative in ordinary writing is usually milder than that. It is formal. Friends would just say lost in thought.
沉思的、反覆思索的
組成From ruminate + -ive (the ending that turns a verb into an adjective meaning “tending to do this”).
同家族的字
- ruminatethe verb this adjective is built from
- ruminantthe grass-eating animal whose slow chewing gave the picture
- ruminativelythe adverb form
原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
ruminativeadj/ˈruməˌneɪdɪv/
- 1
Causing rumination or prone to it; thoughtful.
- They waited expectantly while he directed a ruminative yawn toward the white smiling moon.
- ‘It happened,’ returned the man, with a ruminative air, as he drew his right hand across his chin, and dipped the other in the pocket of his rough outer coat, ‘it happened somewhere about here as I reckon. I don’t think it can have been a mile from here.’
- 2
Relating to or characteristic of ruminants; chewing the cud.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。