Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of reexamine
Explanation
To reexamine something is to consider or inspect it again. A detective might need to go back and reexamine the scene of a crime several times during her investigation. A scientist who's studying an unfamiliar bacteria will examine it, and then reexamine it again and again. And, if you still have an earache a week after starting antibiotics, your doctor may want to reexamine you. Whenever you take another careful look at something, you reexamine it. The verb reexamine adds the "again" prefix re- to examine, from the Latin examinare, "to test, try, consider, or ponder."
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.
Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband were killed in the June 2025 attacks, prompting legislators all over the country to reexamine privacy laws for elected officials and political figures at large.
From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 2, 2026
Researchers combined modern genetic analysis with skeletal studies, physical characteristics, and ecological observations to reexamine the snakes.
From Science Daily • May 26, 2026
If the discussion sparked by Anthropic’s CEO and other AI pioneers leads scientists and the public to reexamine longstanding assumptions about mind and awareness, it may mark the beginning of a much broader intellectual shift.
From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 25, 2026
The current rescheduling push dates back to October of 2022, when former President Joe Biden directed the Department of Health and Human Services to reexamine cannabis’s scheduling status.
From Salon • Feb. 6, 2026
The state continued trying to execute Mr. Hinton until we won a ruling in the United States Supreme Court in 2015 that required the prosecutors to finally reexamine the evidence.
From "Just Mercy" by Bryan Stevenson
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.
