revivify
Americanverb (used with object)
verb
Other Word Forms
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.
Vocabulary lists containing revivify
Power Prefix: re-
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"Simon's Saga," Vocabulary from Episode 6
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Florida's B.E.S.T. Common Prefixes: re-
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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:
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
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
But Stevenson has also created a new dynamic of collection and dispersal to help revivify memory of the state’s ugly and sordid past.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 27, 2018
The ancient Egyptians, assured that a man’s ka or double shall revivify his body, took pains to guard the flesh from corruption, steeping the corpse in natron and stuffing it with spices.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 11, Slice 3 "Frost" to "Fyzabad" by Various
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
By last September, when a Jaimes strip spawned the meme “Sluggo is lit,” the revivified “Nancy” — which had reached its commercial zenith decades ago under Ernie Bushmiller — was once again a cultural hit.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 9, 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
In recent years, the academy has reversed a number of decisions aimed at revivifying the flagging show, including a much-maligned proposal to institute a “best popular film award.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 22, 2022
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
No one who studies the religious question in Japan at all can fail to notice the extraordinary revivifying of Buddhism for what it feels to be a life and death struggle with an alien faith.
From Japanese Girls and Women Revised and Enlarged Edition by Alice Mabel Bacon
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.
