rebuild
Americanverb (used with object)
-
rebuilds,
present (3rd person singular)
-
rebuilt,
past participle, past
-
rebuilded,
past participle, past (Archaic)
-
rebuilding
present participle
-
to repair, especially to dismantle and reassemble with new parts.
to rebuild an old car.
-
to replace, restrengthen, or reinforce.
to rebuild an army.
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to revise, reshape, or reorganize.
to rebuild a shattered career.
verb (used without object)
-
rebuilds,
present (3rd person singular)
-
rebuilt,
past participle, past
-
rebuilded,
past participle, past (Archaic)
-
rebuilding
present participle
verb
-
to make, construct, or form again
the cost of rebuilding the house
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(tr) to restore (a system or situation) to a previous condition
his struggle to rebuild his life
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
rebuildsimple
-
rebuildssimple
-
have rebuildedperfect
-
have rebuiltperfect
-
has rebuildedperfect
-
has rebuiltperfect
-
am rebuildingprogressive
-
are rebuildingprogressive
-
is rebuildingprogressive
-
have been rebuildingperfect progressive
-
has been rebuildingperfect progressive
Past
-
rebuildedsimple
-
rebuiltsimple
-
had rebuildedperfect
-
had rebuiltperfect
-
was rebuildingprogressive
-
were rebuildingprogressive
-
had been rebuildingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of rebuild
Explanation
When you construct something again, you rebuild it. If the chair you made from scraps of wood collapses when you sit in it, you can either rebuild it or give up on the idea of making your own furniture. When a natural disaster — like a hurricane or a tornado — destroys people's houses, they usually need the community's help to rebuild them. Before modern fire departments existed, several cities in the United States burned in terrible fires, destroying nearly all the homes and businesses. These cities had to rebuild, which they often did using less flammable materials, like bricks, rather than just wood.
Vocabulary lists containing rebuild
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:
Grant said it was an apt name because his company aimed to rebuild a metals supply chain for America with a smelter planned for Arkansas.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026
Ideally, we’d like to rebuild our emergency reserves to around $100,000.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 13, 2026
Bass called the permit request a “slap in the face,” and criticized the company for looking to rebuild before the cleanup had been completed.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 13, 2026
"I am standing to unite our party, to back our movement, to seize this moment and rebuild Scottish Labour as a party for working people of Scotland," he said.
From BBC ● Aug. 12, 2026
“I want to help rebuild these circuits,” he says.
From "A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age" by Matt Richtel
Instead, Ted’s emphasis on personal growth and camaraderie rebuilds the Greyhounds from their league’s demoralized joke into its comeback kings, powered by their yearning to Believe.
From Salon ● Aug. 7, 2026
In a drive-by survey of a portion of Altadena she identified 24 prefab projects, or about 1 out of 9 rebuilds.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 7, 2026
An essential part of the logic of hosting had been to help catalyse new infrastructure including transport and stadium builds and rebuilds.
From BBC ● Jun. 11, 2026
“Nothing goes away,” the omniscient narrator observes of a ruined cottage that Tomás rebuilds.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 29, 2026
By the early nineties, a scientist at Yale had used HeLa to discover that human cancer cells contain an enzyme called telomerase that rebuilds their telomeres.
From "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot
But whence cometh all this to you, these stuffs and vessels, and who was it rebuilded this house in a space so short?
From The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 16 by Sir Richard Francis Burton
What will it avail to these old bones if the Temple be rebuilded, and I die without placing my hands on the eyelids of my boy and blessing him in Thy name?
From Tales of the Chesapeake by George Alfred Townsend
Once more the vast dome of heaven became the roof of my house, and within the house was rebuilded that which my soul called beautiful.
From A Tramp's Sketches by Stephen Graham
The Lord will cause Jerusalem to be rebuilded “upon her own heap.”
From Why I Preach the Second Coming by Isaac Massey Haldeman
When the house on Third and Cumberland was burnt, he rebuilded it, and the owners charged him such rent he had to move.
From Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves Arkansas Narratives, Part 7 by Work Projects Administration
But the deeper failure isn’t land management alone—it’s an aviation fleet the federal government has let atrophy for decades and never rebuilt to match the threat.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 23, 2026
The Greek struggled to make an impact during a two-year spell at Norwich City but since leaving has rebuilt his career.
From BBC ● Jul. 23, 2026
One of Europe's biggest onshore wind farms is to be flattened and rebuilt with fewer, taller turbines, its owner has announced.
From BBC ● Jul. 22, 2026
The rebuilt 51-foot-long ship with two masts, which launched in 2022, is mostly held together the old-fashioned way, with wooden pegs.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 15, 2026
And the deep windows with their rebuilt sashes remained glassless.
From "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck
Per the Journal, the hard-liners who occupy the country’s key military posts have focused on rebuilding their missile and drone arsenal.
From Slate ● Aug. 17, 2026
The government has declared an "economic emergency" but has not yet published estimates of how much rebuilding the quake zone will cost.
From Barron's ● Aug. 14, 2026
“We will probably end up rebuilding homes with our own hands.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 14, 2026
By the time Aggarwal arrived for the three-day affair, he had already laid off staff, stopped selling the company’s original product and was rebuilding.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 7, 2026
And finally, a construction worker, rebuilding a ship in ways no one ever considered before this.
From "The Martian" by Andy Weir
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.
