rephrase
Americanverb (used with object)
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rephrases,
present (3rd person singular)
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rephrased,
past participle, past
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rephrasing
present participle
verb
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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rephrasesimple
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rephrasessimple
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have rephrasedperfect
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has rephrasedperfect
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am rephrasingprogressive
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are rephrasingprogressive
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is rephrasingprogressive
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have been rephrasingperfect progressive
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has been rephrasingperfect progressive
Past
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rephrasedsimple
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had rephrasedperfect
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was rephrasingprogressive
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were rephrasingprogressive
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had been rephrasingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of rephrase
Explanation
To rephrase something is to say it again, in a slightly different way. You might rephrase your question if the person you're asking doesn't understand it the first time. You might want to rephrase something to clarify a statement, adjust your ideas to fit your audience, or try not to offend the person you're talking to. A salesman might rephrase his pitch if he's not having much success selling encyclopedias, and an author might rephrase material from a book so that the kindergartners she's talking to will understand her. The word combines the prefix re-, "again," and phrase, from the Greek phrasis, or "speech."
Vocabulary lists containing rephrase
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:
She said she volunteered in November to mediate the meetings, instructing residents to wait their turn to speak or rephrase their questions without profanity.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 11, 2026
Blanche keeps getting interrupted by mostly successful objections from the prosecutors, and the judge has occasionally asked him to rephrase the question.
From BBC ● May 16, 2024
It’s surprisingly challenging to definitively answer this question, as we’ll see, so let’s slightly rephrase: How many naked-eye stars host planets that we know about?
From Scientific American ● Oct. 6, 2023
How do we rephrase leaping to intention, which is a real stumbling block?
From Salon ● Aug. 27, 2023
“I see. And can you rephrase that in the form of a question?”
From "Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library" by Chris Grabenstein
In the next response, Waters essentially rephrases her answer in response to a similar question, but includes the “confrontational” remark.
From Slate ● Apr. 20, 2021
Or, as he rephrases the question: “I mean, why doesn’t it violate the Constitution to hold a person in prison for 20 years, for conduct which the Constitution forbids making criminal?”
From Slate ● Oct. 13, 2015
It also, perhaps, rephrases the question of what defines a national theatre: suggesting that its job is to travel out into the nation rather than hoping the nation will gladly troop to its door.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 2, 2011
It’s the way he takes other sources and purposefully either omits credit or rephrases the information so that his audience will likely infer it’s his own work.
From Newsweek
An old friend learns shocking things about the title figure after his death, and the author skillfully rephrases an old truth-that most people know of others only what it is comfortable to know.
From Time Magazine Archive
The “Family Docudrama” series and much that followed read as something like autofiction, drawn from life but juiced up, rephrased, with gestures and incidents isolated and amplified.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 25, 2026
He highlighted that plagiarism detection software had found several tracts of Arday's PhD dissertation to be copied verbatim or lightly rephrased from prior academic works by other authors.
From BBC ● Aug. 7, 2026
Augustin cited research that documented a pattern in which chatbots rephrased and extrapolated what people shared, and told them they’re unique and that their thoughts have great implications.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 27, 2026
Shocking many legal analysts, the court rephrased it entirely to something far more vague — and which will have no clear impact on prosecutions.
From Washington Post ● Jul. 31, 2021
We can readily understand Michelangelo’s discomfort, for Titian has rephrased his sculpture in utterly sensuous terms through the painterly application of sonorous color that is characteristic of his work.
From "History of Art, Volume 1" by H.W. Janson
By rephrasing melodies, throwing in slang, using nonsense syllables, embracing scatting, and making it seem as if he was speaking directly to you, he changed the way people sang and thought about vocal performances.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 25, 2026
Wallace tried rephrasing the question by asking if Driver ever thought his career would be easier if he looked like Robert Redford.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 5, 2023
Information-rich resources like newspapers and discussion boards might find that these systems are harvesting their material and rephrasing it so eloquently that nobody ever bothers to navigate to the original page.
From Slate ● Mar. 1, 2023
The moment is vintage Tyler: the epiphany that will surprise no one, a clever rephrasing of conventional wisdom that merely affirms what we already believe.
From New York Times ● Mar. 20, 2022
He felt that this needed a little polishing and rephrasing, but that there was a germ of wit in it.
From The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley
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.
