Question

Chew Your Cud to think deeply to oneself; to turn a matter over and over in your mind

Accepted Answer

Don't bother your father right now. He's in the den chewing his cud over problems at work. In the mid-1500s a lot of people owned cows, sheep, and goats. These are animals that chew their cuds (food that is spit up from the stomach to the mouth and chewed again). It's a long process. A person lost in deep thought—pondering, reflecting, speculating—made a clever 16th-century writer think of an animal chewing its cud, and this saying was born. Sometimes it's shortened just to "chew over" a matter.

Idiom	Chew Your Cud
Example	Don't bother your father right now. He's in the den chewing his cud over problems at work.
Meaning	to think deeply to oneself; to turn a matter over and over in your mind
Origin	In the mid-1500s a lot of people owned cows, sheep, and goats. These are animals that chew their cuds (food that is spit up from the stomach to the mouth and chewed again). It's a long process. A person lost in deep thought—pondering, reflecting, speculating—made a clever 16th-century writer think of an animal chewing its cud, and this saying was born. Sometimes it's shortened just to "chew over" a matter.

Chew Cud Chewing Bother Father Den Problems Work