reanimate
Americanverb (used with object)
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reanimates,
present (3rd person singular)
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reanimated,
past participle, past
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reanimating
present participle
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to restore to life; resuscitate.
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to give fresh vigor, spirit, or courage to.
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to stimulate to renewed activity.
verb
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to refresh or enliven (something) again
to reanimate their enervated lives
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to bring back to life
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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reanimatesimple
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reanimatessimple
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have reanimatedperfect
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has reanimatedperfect
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am reanimatingprogressive
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are reanimatingprogressive
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is reanimatingprogressive
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have been reanimatingperfect progressive
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has been reanimatingperfect progressive
Past
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reanimatedsimple
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had reanimatedperfect
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was reanimatingprogressive
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were reanimatingprogressive
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had been reanimatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of reanimate
Explanation
To reanimate is to bring someone (or something) back to life, or to give them renewed energy. A new lead singer might be just the thing your band needs to reanimate its concerts. You can reanimate someone in a literal way by giving them CPR after a heart attack — and you can also reanimate them more figuratively, simply by getting them excited about a fun weekend plan. Even if your friend is half asleep on a Monday morning in math class, the idea of a Saturday at the amusement park might be enough to reanimate her. The Latin root animare means "give breath to" and "endow with spirit."
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:
Spear dies a hero at the second season’s close, only for a shaman to reanimate him in the third season premiere as a zombie.
From Salon ● Feb. 1, 2026
One of the pleasures here is witnessing both actors reanimate the rhythms of a long-ago conversation, their text absent the typical tidiness of a screenplay and instead an interwoven network of inflection, attitude, allusion.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 6, 2025
The exhibition endeavors to reanimate these artworks by re-awakening their sensory capacities.”
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 8, 2023
And they do so by using overlooked materials like those Lovell and Drucker so lovingly reanimate in their documentary, which won a special jury award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival for clarity of vision.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 21, 2023
Hazel didn’t think it was so impressive compared to the powers of a guy who could reanimate skeletons and bring people back from the dead, but it felt good to surprise him for a change.
From "The Son of Neptune" by Rick Riordan
However, NME wrote in a four-star review of the film that Ortega "reanimates" the undead classic and applauds her performance as a the "sharp, disenchanted daughter".
From BBC ● Sep. 9, 2024
For a scene in which a lab rat dies and then reanimates, Álvarez enlisted Tippett Studio, the outfit run by legendary effects master Phil Tippett, to make a model rodent move through stop-motion animation.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 7, 2024
Plant biologists report that a species of tree fern found only in Panama reanimates its own dead leaf fronds, converting them into root structures that feed the mother plant.
From Science Daily ● Jan. 29, 2024
Her revelatory, flawless reading of the challenging 1922 novel “Jacob’s Room” reanimates Woolf’s mercurial stream-of-consciousness prose, revealing her genius in ways perhaps lost on the casual reader, but conveyed through Stevenson’s painstakingly realized performance.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 7, 2022
Is it an angel, is it a demon who reanimates it?
From The Phantom World or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. by Henry Christmas
People were uploading old photographs of ancestors, then watching them blink, smile and move their heads as software "reanimated" their loved ones.
From BBC ● Feb. 8, 2026
When a formerly dead, telekinetic fish named Flippy is reanimated, cop and cat reluctantly team up to fight their common foe and save Ohkay City.
From Salon ● Dec. 19, 2025
But the investigation into Neal has reanimated the discussion about the treatment of women.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 28, 2025
Our memories have become forever digital debris to be sucked in, digested, and reanimated by machine learners.
From Slate ● Sep. 22, 2024
A lich was an undead creature, usually an incredibly powerful wizard or king who had employed dark magic to bind his intellect to his own reanimated corpse, thus achieving a perverted form of immortality.
From "Ready Player One: A Novel" by Ernest Cline
"We're reanimating the heart, in some sense, and in a way that we can study and potentially treat its dysfunction," Roche says.
From Science Daily ● Dec. 8, 2023
The team of researchers from Russia, Germany and France said the biological risk of reanimating the viruses they studied was “totally negligible” due to the strains they targeted, mainly those capable of infecting amoeba microbes.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 29, 2022
But the idea of reanimating the dead hasn't.
From Salon ● Oct. 30, 2022
The pun is inspired; it also reminds us that cinema has always been an art of channeling ghosts, of communing with and even reanimating the dead.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 25, 2022
The air so clear and so rare filled his lungs with wholesomely sweet and reanimating breath.
From The Eagle's Heart by Hamlin Garland
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.
