reconstruct
Americanverb (used with object)
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reconstructs,
present (3rd person singular)
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reconstructed,
past participle, past
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reconstructing
present participle
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to construct again; rebuild; make over.
The church was burned in 1895, but reconstructed in 1897.
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to re-create in the mind from given or available information.
The first step in solving this crime was to reconstruct the events of the murder.
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to cause to abandon earlier positions, beliefs, etc.; cause to adjust to new or current situations.
He's a reconstructed man with progressive views on gender equality.
The protesters and resisters refuse to be reconstructed.
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Historical Linguistics. to arrive at (hypothetical earlier forms of words, phonemic systems, etc.) by comparison of data from a later language or group of related languages.
verb
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to construct or form again; rebuild
to reconstruct a Greek vase from fragments
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to form a picture of (a crime, past event, etc) by piecing together evidence or acting out a version of what might have taken place
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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reconstructernoun
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reconstructionnoun
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reconstructornoun
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reconstructibleadjective
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reconstructiveadjective
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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reconstructsimple
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reconstructssimple
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have reconstructedperfect
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has reconstructedperfect
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am reconstructingprogressive
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are reconstructingprogressive
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is reconstructingprogressive
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have been reconstructingperfect progressive
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has been reconstructingperfect progressive
Past
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reconstructedsimple
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had reconstructedperfect
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was reconstructingprogressive
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were reconstructingprogressive
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had been reconstructingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of reconstruct
Explanation
If the verb to "construct" means to build something, then to reconstruct means to build it again. You can reconstruct a building, a city, or even an idea. If a house is destroyed in a fire, earthquake, or flood, you might try to reconstruct it — or you could build a totally new one. Either way, though, you could still be said to be reconstructing your home. Some buildings were destroyed so long ago that we don't know what they really looked like. The same can be said for whole cities and cultures. Still, archeologists try to reconstruct how those cities and cultures appeared at the time that they were flourishing. Linguists reconstruct long-dead languages. Detectives try to reconstruct crimes in order to figure out who committed them.
Vocabulary lists containing reconstruct
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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:
What happened in the minutes that followed is still difficult to reconstruct.
From BBC ● Sep. 1, 2026
Nepal's Department of Immigration has been trying to reconstruct who passed through Rasuwagadhi in the final hours before the disaster.
From BBC ● Sep. 1, 2026
By tracking extremely small changes in the spacecrafts' velocities, the team was able to reconstruct the gravitational field surrounding Mars.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 30, 2026
To reconstruct what may have happened, the scientists used the Bern SPH code, which has been developed at the University of Bern over roughly two decades.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 26, 2026
It is impossible today to reconstruct what actually occurred, because the exact nature of Gunda’s tumor is unrecorded and whether other factors contributed to her recovery is undocumented.
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
The life Mr. Meyer reconstructs reads as a sustained revolt against the power of categories to diminish.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 7, 2026
The team made the discovery using a new method that examines hundreds of present-day human genomes and reconstructs ancient genealogical connections among their DNA sequences.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 1, 2026
In three-and-a-half hours and for less than $10 million, Corbet reconstructs post-war America from the ground up, proving his sweeping artistic vision to be just as impressive as László Tóth’s.
From Salon ● Feb. 28, 2025
Besides Sabri, actors play Ghofrane and Rahma, the daughters who left, as Ben Hania reconstructs the family’s past in search for clues for their radicalization.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 23, 2024
She starts with the propositions that all is God and that there is no matter, and then reconstructs the Bible to accommodate these statements.
From McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 by Various
While people were grieving and exhausted, critical financial obligations had to be reconstructed, verified and settled.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 11, 2026
This series of highly localised temperatures was reconstructed by Robert Rohde, chief scientist at the independent Berkeley Earth organisation in California.
From Barron's ● Sep. 8, 2026
On paper, the star-studded offense is seemingly invincible, the reconstructed defense inarguably impenetrable.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 6, 2026
The researchers also reconstructed how these ancient insects may have lived.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 27, 2026
I explained how I had reconstructed the text, then quoted the reconstructed text from memory, showing him how it fitted perfectly to the explanation offered by the simplest of all the commentaries.
From "The Chosen" by Chaim Potok
When something goes wrong, however, reconstructing that journey can begin to feel like a real investigation.
From Salon ● Aug. 27, 2026
He discovered the Internet Archive had preserved a copy of Vine's data and spent months reconstructing it.
From BBC ● Aug. 20, 2026
The actor leads a captivating series on National Geographic about the ancient city and its inhabitants, reconstructing the lives of those who might have escaped the lethal effects of Mount Vesuvius’s eruption.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 22, 2026
By reconstructing how supernova occurrence rates vary with the ages of stars in different galaxies, the model helps scientists investigate long standing questions about the systems that eventually produce these explosions.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 29, 2026
The biggest difficulty in reconstructing the pre-Colombian past is the absence of voices from that past.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
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.
