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
BIRTH/REBIRTH In the summer’s second spin on “Frankenstein” — see “The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster,” above — Marin Ireland plays a pathologist who aims to revivify a dead child.
From New York Times ● May 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
Nay, what potenter magic needs my Venice to revivify her past whenever she will, than the serpent cunning of her Grand Canal?
From Venetian Life by Howells, William Dean
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
It’s a wishful advertisement for a revivified nation, one swept clean of conflict and damage, a view sustained in the work of his students.
From New York Times ● Mar. 23, 2023
Their choice is pure vanity, favoring a sculpted bod over a revivified brain.
From Slate ● Jan. 1, 2020
Niftiest of all, each episode highlights one of Dickinson’s poems, which feel revivified, not merely invoked.
From The New Yorker ● Nov. 18, 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
Well, in this instance, nothing does: A buff and blazing James McAvoy leads a fabulous British cast in a revivifying take on “Cyrano.”
From Washington Post ● Apr. 14, 2022
Anne Rice, meanwhile, was revivifying the Gothic horror tale with stories of vampires.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 30, 2021
But after entropy, narcissism and spiritual decay comes revivifying destruction.
From The Guardian ● Mar. 27, 2020
He supplied many imposing premises which Origen, representing the sound half of his audience, used for Christian purposes, whilst Plotinus employed them for revivifying the dead body of paganism.
From The Catholic World; Volume I, Issues 1-6 A Monthly Eclectic Magazine by Rameur, E.
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.
