Reconstruct

How to spell reconstruct

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce reconstruct

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does reconstruct mean?

1. verbTo build or assemble something again after it has been damaged, demolished, or taken apart.
2. verbTo form a complete picture of an event or sequence by gathering and arranging available evidence.

Reconstruct in a sentence

• The city council plans to reconstruct the bridge that collapsed last winter.

• Detectives tried to reconstruct the victim's final movements from phone records.

• Engineers had to reconstruct the engine from the original blueprints.

• Historians reconstruct daily life in the village using old letters and ledgers.

Where does reconstruct come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is built from Latin roots that English assembled into a single verb. The prefix re- means 'again' or 'anew', and the core comes from the Latin verb construere, 'to pile up' or 'to build together', formed from con- 'together' and struere 'to heap, build, or arrange'. The same struere root underlies a whole family of English words including 'structure', 'construct', 'instruct', and 'destroy', all of which carry the idea of building or arranging. 'Reconstruct' emerged in English in the eighteenth century by adding the productive prefix re- to the existing verb 'construct', giving the precise sense of building something again or piecing it back together. Because the spelling simply stacks recognisable parts (re + con + struct), the trap is less the letters themselves and more remembering the double c that hides inside the con- segment.

How the word is built

• re- (again)
• con- (together)
• struct (to build)