re-enact
Americanverb (used with object)
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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
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have been re-enactingperfect progressive
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has been re-enactingperfect progressive
Past
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re-enactedsimple
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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:
Maybe the way to improve the off-site is to re-enact the playful things we did at an age when making friends seemed easier.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 23, 2026
As he spoke to the group, the defendant "appeared to re-enact or show others what had happened", Cook told the court.
From BBC ● Jun. 16, 2026
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
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
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
People gather around the flames to sing, dance and pray for an evening ritual called Holika Dahan, which re-enacts the demise of a Hindu mythical demoness, Holika.
From New York Times ● Mar. 22, 2024
To illustrate, she briefly re-enacts a scene from the Brit Awards.
From BBC ● Jul. 19, 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
He had the air of one who recalls the good old days, of one who in familiar scenes re-enacts the joys of his vanished youth.
From Uneasy Money by Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville)
Then he and Sterling K. Brown re-enacted the famous “of all the gin joints” piano scene between Rick and Sam from “Casablanca.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 16, 2026
Dean jokingly re-enacted the dismissal in a game for Southern Vipers the following day and the pair have since played together for London Spirit, winning The Hundred last year.
From BBC ● Jun. 27, 2025
Enlisting comedian and frequent on-air talent Guillermo, Kimmel re-enacted the moment when the foreman delivered the decision on all 34 counts–guilty.
From Salon ● May 31, 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
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
On Friday, he is due to travel at night to the Colosseum for the Way of the Cross procession re-enacting Christ’s crucifixion.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 28, 2024
It was Wood re-enacting Nasser Hussain's famous gesture during a one-day international against India in 2002 but, unlike Hussain, he soon broke into a smile.
From BBC ● Jul. 6, 2023
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.
