ponder

ponder, meditate, muse, ruminate can mean to consider or examine something attentively, seriously, and with more or less deliberation.

Ponder characteristically retains its original implication of weighing and usually suggests consideration of a problem from all angles or of a thing in all its relations in order that nothing important will escape one; unlike weigh in a related sense (see CONSIDER 1) it does not usually suggest a balancing that leads to a conclusion

{

the great Sung master was wont . . . to . . . spend the day pondering the subjects of his brush by the side of running streams— Binyon

}

{

was pondering over the best style in which to address the unknown and distant relatives— Gibbons

}

Meditate adds to ponder an implication of a definite directing or focusing of one's thought; in intransitive use, especially, it more often suggests an effort to understand the thing so considered in all its aspects, relations, or values than an effort to work out a definite problem

{

meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them—/ Tim 4:15

}

{

I sat down ... to give way to the melancholy reflections called up by the sight before me. I know not how long I meditated— Wilkie Collins

}

In transitive use meditate implies such deep consideration of a plan or project that it approaches intend or purpose in meaning

{

meanwhile, he was meditating a book on Shakespearian questions— H. J. Oliver

}

Muse comes close to meditate in implying focused attention but it suggests a less intellectual aim; often it implies absorption and a languid turning over of a topic as if in a dream, a fancy, or a remembrance

{

let him . . . read a certain passage of full poesy or distilled prose, and let him wander with it, and muse upon it . . . and dream upon it— Keats

}

{

Cabot mused over the fact that the old bastard considered himself . . . one of the eminences of the great metropolis— Purdy

}

{

still a pleasant mystery; enough to muse over on a dull afternoon— Da vis

}

Ruminate implies a going over the same problem, the same subject, or the same object of meditation again and again; it may be used in place of any of these words, but it does not carry as strong a suggestion of weighing as ponder, of concentrated attention as meditate, or of absorption as muse, and it more often implies such processes as reasoning or speculation

{

I sit at home and ruminate on the qualities of certain little books like this one—little elixirs of perfection, full of subtlety and sadness—which I can read and read again— L. P. Smith

}

{

forty years of ruminating on life, of glimpsing it in its simplest forms through microscopes— Kaempffert

}

Analogous words: weigh, *consider, contemplate: reflect, deliberate, speculate, *think, cogitate