Re-

//ɹiː// prefix

prefix ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Prefix
  1. 1
    again, anew morpheme

    "re- + new → renew (“to make something new again”)"

  2. 2
    a completive or intensification of the base; up, a-, out morpheme

    "reletter, relead, rebronze (examples from: )"

  3. 3
    back, backward morpheme

    "reject, reply, resist"

Synonyms

All synonyms
anapalinwith

Example

More examples

"re- + new → renew (“to make something new again”)"

Etymology

From Middle English re-, from Old French re-, from Latin re-, red- (“back; anew; again; against”), of uncertain origin but conjectured by Watkins to be from Proto-Indo-European *wret-, a metathetic alteration of *wert- (“to turn”). Displaced native English ed-, eft-, a-, with-/wither-, gain-/again-.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.