re-enact
Americanverb (used with object)
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re-enacts,
present (3rd person singular)
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re-enacted,
past participle, past
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re-enacting
present participle
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to enact for a second or subsequent time.
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to repeat, particularly as a performance, something which happened previously.
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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re-enactsimple
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re-enactssimple
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have re-enactedperfect
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has re-enactedperfect
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am re-enactingprogressive
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are re-enactingprogressive
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is re-enactingprogressive
-
have been re-enactingperfect progressive
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has been re-enactingperfect progressive
Past
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re-enactedsimple
-
had re-enactedperfect
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was re-enactingprogressive
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were re-enactingprogressive
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had been re-enactingperfect progressive
Future
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The political centerpiece of 1968 was, at least if you’re French, the événements of May, in which bourgeois students took to the streets of Paris to re-enact the revolutionary theater of 1789.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 21, 2025
I found trying to get actors to recreate these scenarios and re-enact anything from scenarios I read about in my research and from witness testimony, is definitely the wrong way to go about it.
From Salon ● Jan. 25, 2024
As Colbie got older, she and her sister would re-enact “Mystery Box” cooking challenges, imitating what they saw on “MasterChef Junior.”
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 5, 2023
“The flip to the talk show, our desires to play and re-enact and embody in this way, are born of the limitations of the archive itself,” Joynt said.
From New York Times ● Dec. 6, 2022
They celebrate first of all the inviolability of the earth, and they re-enact, each time, in stereotyped choreography, our long anxiety about the nature of life.
From "The Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas
On stage, Lion re-enacts the struggle between man and machine, going from ChatGPT to ChatGP-Free.
From BBC ● May 8, 2026
Pope Francis had performed this ceremony, which re-enacts Jesus's gesture toward his apostles, among marginalised people, whether prisoners, migrants or the homeless.
From Barron's ● Apr. 1, 2026
When she gathers the flowers, Eiko re-enacts the film in real time, pressing the blossoms to her body and then smashing them against her chest.
From New York Times ● Apr. 17, 2022
To watch as Wile E. Coyote chases the Roadrunner through “Mad Max: Fury Road,” or as Granny re-enacts bullet-time martial arts moves from “The Matrix,” is to discover the answer.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 15, 2021
When a child re-enacts what he sees, he comes to a better understanding of its meaning.
From The Unfolding Life A Study of Development with Reference to Religious Training by Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
Similar clips of costumed moviegoers transforming theaters into discothèques spread across Instagram and TikTok as Jackson fans turned out in force to see parts of the star’s life re-enacted on the big screen.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 30, 2026
It is a safe bet those scenes will be re-enacted when he takes his final Anfield curtain call.
From BBC ● Jan. 26, 2024
But something about the unnerving intelligence of Glazer’s conception, the obsessive intensity with which he has excavated and re-enacted this chapter of history, resists the usual bromides about finding the universal in the specific.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 14, 2023
My parents had ensured that I watch re-enacted versions of the Indian epics of Mahabharata and Ramayana on our tiny TV screen in my small Iowan midwestern town.
From Salon ● Aug. 7, 2023
The mother held up her hands and re-enacted the scene.
From "How the García Girls Lost Their Accents" by Julia Alvarez
The Catholic-majority country's annual spectacle re-enacting the last moments of Jesus Christ typically draws up to 12,000 local and foreign tourists.
From Barron's ● Apr. 3, 2026
This was also the heyday of traveling extravaganzas like Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West shows, which featured hundreds of performers re-enacting frontier battles and showing off their hunting and sharpshooting skills.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 15, 2026
Gunning believes her character is re-enacting "the life she should have had" instead of living her otherwise almost solitary existence.
From BBC ● Apr. 19, 2024
Across Latin America, Roman Catholic faithful commemorated Good Friday with ceremonies re-enacting the crucifixion of Jesus.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 4, 2024
Silent Sam was re-enacting the entire episode in pantomime for the benefit of Tim and Tess and some other infant creatures.
From "Redwall" by Brian Jacques
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
