retell
Americanverb (used with object)
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retells,
present (3rd person singular)
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retold,
past participle, past
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retelling
present participle
verb
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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retellsimple
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retellssimple
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have retoldperfect
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has retoldperfect
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am retellingprogressive
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are retellingprogressive
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is retellingprogressive
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have been retellingperfect progressive
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has been retellingperfect progressive
Past
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retoldsimple
-
had retoldperfect
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was retellingprogressive
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were retellingprogressive
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had been retellingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of retell
Explanation
If you recite your story a second time, you retell it. After they hear about how you actually slipped on a banana peel, your laughing friends may beg you to retell the incident over and over again. To retell is to reiterate something, or to tell it again. You might retell your favorite joke every time you have a new audience, or you may find yourself having to retell the details of a fender bender you witnessed once the police show up. When a writer takes up an old theme or story to put their own new twist on it, they retell it: "My goal was to retell the classic Cinderella tale in a modern way."
Vocabulary lists containing retell
Vocabulary of the Common Core
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Conventions, Writing to Sources, and Speaking & Listening, Unit 1
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Part 3 Vocabulary (Unit 4)
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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:
Anthony Puzo, Mario Puzo's son, told Publishers Weekly: "We had been looking for someone to retell the story from a new perspective."
From Barron's ● May 14, 2026
But much like Baz Luhrmann’s “Romeo + Juliet,” she’s not trying to retell this famous tale; she’s reimagining it as the outsized, grand spectacle it has become in both public consciousness and personal affection.
From Salon ● Feb. 14, 2026
Now “Five Bullets,” by Elliot Williams, and “Fear and Fury,” by Heather Ann Thompson, retell the story.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 6, 2026
Before the alert was added, she frequently had to retell the story of how he was failed.
From BBC ● Nov. 28, 2025
I went back to class during third period and was bombarded with requests to retell the story.
From "Made You Up" by Francesca Zappia
Osbourne retells the infamous story of orally beheading an unsuspecting bat.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 15, 2025
As she retells the highs and lows of the relationship through the nightly set list, she’s faced with a decision.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 29, 2024
It retells America’s early political history through jam-packed raps and musical numbers that hurtle through genres including hip-hop, pop and R&B.
From BBC ● Aug. 3, 2024
It retells the story using interviews and a great deal of footage from the actual show, which underlines how innovative it was.
From New York Times ● May 3, 2024
In other words, the song relives and retells the experiences of a child in another century and makes her story highly relatable to us today.
From "Music and the Child" by Natalie Sarrazin
Instead, it will be retold as something far more epic than that.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 19, 2026
Baldwin and Mayall first worked together on the children's television show Grim Tales in 1989, in which Mayall retold stories by the Brothers Grimm.
From BBC ● May 25, 2026
It’s a story that’s been retold in recent weeks amid the Andes virus outbreak on a cruise ship to show how outbreaks sometimes lead to scientific breakthroughs.
From MarketWatch ● May 17, 2026
She’s made something different from your typical adaptation, a movie that brings a fresh perspective to a very old and frequently retold tale.
From Salon ● Feb. 23, 2026
He started all over and retold what he had said.
From "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers
Throughout his lively retelling of the story, he added a series of sound effects to move the story line — among them, wacha, pum, pum, pum, gol.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 7, 2026
His movie is a remarkable piece of autofiction, retelling his first experience with air travel as if it were a love story.
From Salon ● Jun. 10, 2026
Sarnoski is the perfect person to do a retelling tilted toward the end of a rampager’s life.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 14, 2026
Now Lerone Martin, a Stanford professor and senior editor of the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project, offers a rich if overlong retelling of King’s life prior to Montgomery.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 3, 2026
Mate and I could keep the house entertained for hours, telling and retelling the horrors until the sting was out of them.
From "In the Time of the Butterflies" by Julia Alvarez
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.
