rerun
Americanverb (used with object)
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reruns,
present (3rd person singular)
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reran,
past
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rerun,
past participle
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rerunning
present participle
noun
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reruns
plural
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the act of rerunning.
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a showing of a motion picture or television program after its initial run, usually some months or years later.
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the motion picture or television program being shown again.
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Informal. a person or thing that is merely a restatement or imitation of something familiar; rehash.
The plot is just a rerun of every other spy story.
verb
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to broadcast or put on (a film, play, series, etc) again
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to run (a race, etc) again
noun
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a film, play, series, etc, that is broadcast or put on again; repeat
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a race that is run again
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computing the repeat of a part of a computer program
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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rerunsimple
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rerunssimple
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have rerunperfect
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has rerunperfect
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am rerunningprogressive
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are rerunningprogressive
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is rerunningprogressive
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have been rerunningperfect progressive
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has been rerunningperfect progressive
Past
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reransimple
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had rerunperfect
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was rerunningprogressive
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were rerunningprogressive
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had been rerunningperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of rerun
Explanation
When a TV or radio station plays a show again, after its first broadcast, that's a rerun. You may have grown up watching reruns of the shows your parents loved when they were kids. Use rerun as a noun, for the show itself, or a verb, to describe the process of rebroadcasting it: "They rerun this movie every year at Christmas time." When someone used this word in the early nineteenth century, they were talking about races being rerun, or run again. It was first used to mean "television rebroadcast" around 1955.
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:
They were watching a rerun of “The Porter Wagoner Show,” the program that had helped launch Dolly to country music stardom, on a little TV set using rabbit ears, when she appeared.
From Salon ● Aug. 26, 2026
Mitie is asking the High Court to "set aside" the decision and award the contract to Mitie, or rerun the tendering process, or order the government to pay damages.
From BBC ● Apr. 8, 2026
“The risk of a rerun of last year’s tariff chaos has clearly increased, but the situation is still a long way from reaching that degree of disorder.”
From Barron's ● Jan. 19, 2026
But most TV categories felt like a rerun, given that many winners were the same as those feted at the Emmy Awards last September.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 12, 2026
Grandma Post let us have leftover peanut-butter pie for breakfast while she played solitaire, occasionally looking up through her thick glasses at the Perry Mason rerun she had on, the volume blasting.
From "The Miseducation of Cameron Post" by emily m. danforth
He offers never-ending reruns of the same speech, and at this point it fails to entertain, enlighten or move anyone.
From Salon ● Jul. 31, 2026
We lived in the missions’ afterglow, with orange-flavored Tang, syndicated “Star Trek” reruns, and “Star Wars” filling in for actual lunar landings.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 15, 2026
Flagship shows such as the 7.30 evening current affairs programme and its breakfast shows on Thursday will not go ahead, with reruns, pre-programmed shows and BBC content to plug the gap.
From BBC ● Mar. 24, 2026
Those avocado green appliances, Formica countertops, and linoleum floors were just as crappy as they appear in those sitcom reruns.
From Barron's ● Mar. 14, 2026
Now I drink Pepsi, eat old apples, watch reruns on TV.
From "The One and Only Ivan" by Katherine Applegate
The U.S. reran the training scenario over the two-week engagement.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 12, 2026
If you reran the referendum, despite the opinion polls you'd get a very similar result.
From BBC ● Jun. 22, 2023
Hoping to clarify the dates for sites containing Châtelperronian and proto-Aurignacian artifacts, Djakovic and colleagues reran the radiocarbon analyses performed by other teams representing 17 sites across France and northern Spain.
From Science Magazine ● Oct. 13, 2022
Kull said that in response to that criticism, they reran the study in 2018 and incorporated those arguments.
From Washington Post ● May 26, 2022
Times article about the Freedom Writers reran in a New York paper.
From "The Freedom Writers Diary" by The Freedom Writers
But at the same time, the workers on average have to spend more than six hours “botsitting,” checking the AI output, fixing mistakes and rerunning the prompt.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 12, 2026
It is hard to imagine a state ordering a rerunning of primaries under new districts to gut old Section 2 districts.
From Slate ● Apr. 29, 2026
Once a show reached the 100-episode mark, it could be sold into syndication, filling up daytime programming schedules for local television stations, rerunning on cable networks or outside of the United States.
From Reuters ● May 22, 2023
“There would be a major boycott of TV Land or any network that wanted to start rerunning ‘Cosby,’” he said.
From New York Times ● Jul. 1, 2021
I kept rerunning the dream all day until the coach’s whistle blew and he called “Race-off!” and there I was, heading across the field to the starting line.
From "Crash" by Jerry Spinelli
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