mastication

From Late Latin masticātiō, equivalent to masticate +‎ -ion.

• IPA^(key): /mæstɪˈkeɪʃən/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪʃən

mastication (countable and uncountable, plural mastications)

1. (physiology) The process of chewing.
   • 1918 September–November, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Land That Time Forgot”, in The Blue Book Magazine, Chicago, Ill.: Story-press Corp., →OCLC; republished as chapter V, in Hugo Gernsback, editor, Amazing Stories, part I, number 11, New York, N.Y.: Experimenter Publishing, February 1927, →OCLC, book I, page 1002:

     “It is no more blasphemous than that thing which is swiping our meat,” I replied, for whatever the thing was, it had leaped upon our deer and was devouring it in great mouthfuls which it swallowed without mastication. The creature appeared to be a great lizard at least ten feet high, with a huge, powerful tail as long as its torso, mighty hind legs and short forelegs.

2. The process of crushing as though chewed.

• aminostatic

• IPA^(key): /mas.ti.ka.sjɔ̃/

• Audio:

  (file)

mastication f (plural mastications)

1. mastication

• “mastication”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.