repetition
Americannoun
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repetitions
plural
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the act of repeating, or doing, saying, or writing something again; repeated action, performance, production, or presentation.
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repeated utterance; reiteration.
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something made by or resulting from repeating.
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a reproduction, copy, or replica.
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Civil Law. an action or demand for the recovery of a payment or delivery made by error or upon failure to fulfill a condition.
noun
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the act or an instance of repeating; reiteration
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a thing, word, action, etc, that is repeated
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a replica or copy
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civil law Scots law the recovery or repayment of money paid or received by mistake, as when the same bill has been paid twice
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of repetition
1375–1425; late Middle English (< Old French repeticion ) < Latin repetītiōn- (stem of repetītiō ), equivalent to repetīt ( us ) (past participle of repetere to repeat ) + -iōn- -ion
Explanation
Use the noun repetition to describe something that is repeated over and over, like the repetition of singing the alphabet song several times a day to help young children learn the letters. To correctly pronounce repetition, accent the third syllable: "re-peh-TIH-shun." Repetition and the closely related repeat come from the Latin word repetere, meaning "do or say again." It can be a very effective tool in public speaking, such as the repetition of "I have a dream that one day . . ." in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous speech.
Vocabulary lists containing repetition
Literary Devices & Figures of Speech - Introductory
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Poetry: Literary Devices
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AP English Lit exam terms
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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:
More elaborate designs, including hatched bands, grids, and diamond-shaped motifs, also showed evidence of rotation, translation, repetition, and "embedding," i.e., the ability to build hierarchical levels of signs within the same surface.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 9, 2026
The ability to hold another person’s reality alongside one’s own, without reducing it or rewriting it, requires training, repetition and exposure.
From Salon ● Jul. 30, 2026
It isn’t some priceless antiquity that needs to be preserved only by faithful repetition and emulation.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 27, 2026
Settings like this are a good place to start, since they’re controlled environments that involve plenty of repetition, rather than unpredictable elements.
From Barron's ● Jun. 30, 2026
Like the repetition will make us believe this place isn’t a prison.
From "Internment" by Samira Ahmed
"We are talking about people who did not simply draw lines, but organized them according to recurring principles -- parallelisms, grids, rotations and systematic repetitions: a visual grammar in embryo."
From Science Daily ● Aug. 9, 2026
The countless repetitions give you the most beautiful art form where swans glide, fairies dance and every year a giant nutcracker appears.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 31, 2026
As it’s around 300 pages long, including innumerable repetitions, you may ask if the length and density is a bug or a feature.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 10, 2026
He memorized symbols and repetitions when texting girlfriends, a trick he compares to a person who can’t speak Spanish singing along to “La Bamba.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 1, 2026
Most listeners will quickly grasp the form of a short and simple piece, or of one built from many short repetitions.
From "Understanding Basic Music Theory" by Catherine Schmidt-Jones and Russel Jones
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.
