mastication

Other forms of mastication

plural

mastications·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about mastication

What does mastication mean?

mastication means "biting and grinding food in your mouth so it becomes soft enough to swallow".

How many syllables are in mastication?

mastication has 5 syllables and divides as ma-sti-ca-ti-on under the regular spelling rules. It is not in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, so that comes from how the word is written rather than from a recorded pronunciation, and no stress or phonetic transcription is claimed for it.

What is another word for mastication?

Close synonyms include chew, chewing, manduction. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is mastication a common word?

mastication is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.