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
With this wholesome spirit they were about to refresh and revivify the empire, but at the risk of undoing its work of political organization and reducing it to barbarism.
From The Beginnings of New England Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty by John Fiske
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
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
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
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
Also revivifying is the way Turner reshapes the wedding genre for our time, inviting new characters to the party.
From New York Times ● Mar. 21, 2022
Anne Rice, meanwhile, was revivifying the Gothic horror tale with stories of vampires.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 30, 2021
Miranda’s rap-sodic historical epic may not save the soul of a battered republic, but its consolations are real, its pleasures revivifying, its emotional force galvanic.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 30, 2020
It mounted to her eyes and lips, revivifying her ravaged face, beaming forth, inundating him, unfaltering, assured, absolute.
From The Nest, The White Pagoda, The Suicide, A Forsaken Temple, Miss Jones and The Masterpiece by Anne Douglas Sedgwick
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.
