Reconstruction

How to spell reconstruction

14 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce reconstruction

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does reconstruction mean?

1. nounThe act of building something again, or of restoring it to its former state.
2. nounA detailed re-creation of a past event, usually to understand how it happened.

Reconstruction in a sentence

• The reconstruction of the bridge took three years and a large budget.

• The police staged a reconstruction of the robbery at the same time of night.

• After the fire, the reconstruction of the old library began in spring.

• The investigator's reconstruction of the accident matched the witness accounts.

Where does reconstruction come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is built from Latin parts that English assembled into a single noun. The core is the Latin verb construere, meaning 'to pile up' or 'to build together', formed from con- 'together' and struere 'to heap up, to build'; the same struere gives us 'structure', 'instruct', and 'destroy'. The prefix re- adds the sense 'again', so the literal idea is 'building together once more'. English already had 'construction' by the late 1300s through Old French and Latin, and 'reconstruction' followed as a natural compound, appearing in English in the 1700s. The word gained a famous capitalised sense in the United States after the Civil War, when Reconstruction described the rebuilding of the southern states. Remembering the buried 'struct' (the same chunk in 'structure') keeps the spelling steady through the unstressed middle syllables.

How the word is built

• re- (again)
• con- (together)
• struct (build)
• -ion (noun-forming suffix)