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.
See Examples For:
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
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
Again, all communities have that right to reexamine the past.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 24, 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
I want to reexamine the van Daans and decide for myself what’s true and what’s been blown out of proportion.
From "The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank
They’ve reexamined Supreme Court history several times in recent years, including a new season about Neil Gorsuch we’re featuring on Amicus for the next three weeks.
From Slate ● Aug. 15, 2026
Dancing’s insouciance is reexamined so frequently throughout the album’s first half that one might read its message as hollow, like a desperate attempt to ignore all of the troubles outside the club.
From Salon ● Jul. 8, 2026
The spokesperson did not respond when asked whether that accreditation would be reexamined.
From Barron's ● Mar. 16, 2026
As they analyzed M31-2014-DS1, the team also reexamined NGC 6946-BH1.
From Science Daily ● Feb. 14, 2026
He reexamined the poop sheet, then leaned back, satisfied.
From "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick
The hearing came amid news that ICE was pausing warehouse purchases and reexamining contracts signed under former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.
From Slate ● Apr. 27, 2026
By carefully reexamining these datasets, the team identified viral genetic material that closely matched known US strains of CLRDV.
From Science Daily ● Jan. 13, 2026
Nixon’s is a familiar story, but it’s worth reexamining in light of events that unfolded over the weekend.
From Salon ● Sep. 23, 2025
What Hnath did in picking up and reexamining this source material, Harner says, was a remarkable act of harnessing that complexity.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 15, 2025
With these thoughts he moved from one part to the other, examining and reexamining everything.
From The Social Cancer by Charles E. Derbyshire
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.
