the.com/ruminate
thinking so hard you're basically chewing the thought twice, like a cow with existential dread.
means to mull something over slowly and repeatedly, often circling the same worry without resolving it.
from from latin ruminare, to chew the cud, describing cattle re-chewing swallowed food; by the 1500s english borrowed it for minds that keep re-swallowing the same thought.
literal cousinruminant animals, cows, deer, goats
psych termrumination linked to anxiety and depression loops
not brainstormingrumination rarely produces new ideas