- present participle of retell.
retelling
Americannoun
Etymology
Origin of retelling
Explanation
A retelling is a new version of an old story. Somehow, your retelling of your dad's hilarious tale of catching a shoe instead of a fish is never quite as funny as his version. Retelling comes from the verb retell, or "tell again." You can use this word for literal retellings, when an anecdote is simply told all over again for the second (or third) time. It's also useful for updated versions of classic stories. The movie Clueless is a retelling of the Jane Austen novel Emma. And Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres is a retelling of Shakespeare's King Lear.
Vocabulary lists containing retelling
Literary Terms, Grade 8, Units 2–3
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Conventions, Writing to Sources, and Speaking & Listening (Unit 1)
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Additional Literary Terms, Unit 5
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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.
A perfectly normal joke becomes, in the retelling inside your own head, a terrible mistake.
From BBC ● Oct. 6, 2026
While your brother-in-law’s behavior does sound a bit caustic, at least by your retelling, I urge you to de-center yourself.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 24, 2026
The line became reenergerized while laying on the ground and started several fires, according to a retelling of the video in a July court filing by lawyers representing victims.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 20, 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
As in some radical retelling of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, society’s normally invisible workings had been made briefly visible.
From "The Best of Enemies" by Osha Gray Davidson
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.
