Redesign

How to spell redesign

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce redesign

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does redesign mean?

1. verbTo plan and create something again in a new or improved form.
2. nounA new or revised version of something that has been designed again.

Redesign in a sentence

• verb

  The company hired a firm to redesign its outdated website.

• noun

  The magazine's bold redesign attracted a wave of new readers.

• verb

  Engineers had to redesign the engine to meet the new emissions rules.

• noun

  Customers praised the redesign of the mobile app.

Where does redesign come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is a transparent English compound built from the prefix 're-', meaning 'again' or 'back', attached to the verb 'design'. 'Design' itself travelled into English in the late 1500s, ultimately from the Latin designare, which literally meant 'to mark out' or 'to point out', formed from de- 'out' and signare 'to mark', the same signare that gives us 'sign' and 'signal'. The combined form 'redesign' is a much later coinage that simply means to design something afresh, and it became common only as modern manufacturing, publishing, and software made revising existing products routine. Because both halves are still recognisable, the spelling is regular; the only mild trap is keeping the single 'e' in 're-' joined directly to 'design' with no hyphen. The shared signare root quietly links this everyday workplace word to 'signature' and 'assign'.

How the word is built

• re- (again)
• design (from Latin designare: to mark out)