revivify

American  

[ri-viv-uh-fahy] / rɪˈvɪv əˌfaɪ /

verb (used with object)

revivified, revivifying

1. to restore to life; give new life to; revive; reanimate.

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revivify British  

/ rɪˈvɪvɪˌfaɪ /

verb

1. (tr) to give new life or spirit to; revive

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Other Word Forms

• revivification
  noun

Etymology

Origin of revivify

1665–75; < French révivifier < Late Latin revīvificāre. See re-, vivify

Explanation

To bring something back to life, or to inject new energy in it, is to revivify. A few days of rain can revivify an area that's been suffering a mild drought. If you've been up late all week studying for a big exam, you might need a good night's sleep to revivify you. For some people, the short, dark days of winter are a little depressing, while the spring sunshine can revivify them. Anything that gives you new life or energy revivifies you. The Old French vivifier, "come alive," and the prefix re-, "again," are at the root of revivify.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

revivify revivified revivifying

And I think for America to make this comeback, we need to figure out how to revivify place.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 7, 2026

Old family stories are hard to revivify, even when they’re good family stories.

From New York Times ● Apr. 24, 2023

The effect of the literal trains and the physical doors is to revivify concepts that are so much a part of popular consciousness that they have become abstract, almost generic.

From The New Yorker ● Nov. 6, 2019

If anyone can revivify the Frankenstein story, it’s adventurous, prize-winning British writer Jeanette Winterson.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 10, 2019

They have a vigorous movement of young reformers, who, if they are allowed a little time, will revivify China and produce something immeasurably better than the worn-out grinding mechanism that we call civilization.

From The Problem of China by Russell, Bertrand

Jazz haunts with debts owed to its creators, and has a knack for revivals, collectives, new venues in the old forms, and stalwart clubs revivified by benefactors and grant funding.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 28, 2026

Their choice is pure vanity, favoring a sculpted bod over a revivified brain.

From Slate ● Jan. 1, 2020

“In effect, he performed emergency surgery and totally revivified the brand,” Steele told The Washington Post.

From Washington Post ● Feb. 19, 2019

Hecht also pulled together and revivified a stalled “Gone with the Wind” and worked as a last-minute fixer on “Stagecoach,” “The Shop Around the Corner,” “Foreign Correspondent,” and “Gilda.”

From The New Yorker ● Feb. 4, 2019

The National Research Council, which had been founded in 1916 as a conduit of government funds to academic institutions but had been hobbled by political infighting and academic mistrust, became revivified in the postwar years.

From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik

But Jerzy Skolimowski’s formally radical, emotionally wrenching drama about the travails of a donkey is by far this category’s — and perhaps the year’s — most cinematically revivifying achievement.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 2, 2023

Beverage director Luis Mantilla is behind the cocktails, which incorporate housemade syrups and bitters and fill glasses with such revivifying combinations as matcha, Japanese whisky, yuzu and honey syrup.

From Washington Post ● Jan. 21, 2022

Anne Rice, meanwhile, was revivifying the Gothic horror tale with stories of vampires.

From Seattle Times ● Dec. 30, 2021

But the robustness of the entries as a whole was revivifying.

From New York Times ● Apr. 16, 2020

Homer explicitly recognizes this universal belief in the power of blood to convey life and to be a means of revivifying the dead.

From The Eliminator; or, Skeleton Keys to Sacerdotal Secrets by Westbrook, Richard B.