Regenerate

How to spell regenerate

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce regenerate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does regenerate mean?

1. verbTo grow, restore, or bring back to a healthy or original condition after loss or damage.
2. adjectiveSpiritually or morally reformed; reborn into a renewed state.

Regenerate in a sentence

• verb

  Some lizards can regenerate a lost tail within a few weeks.

• adjective

  The sermon described the convert as a regenerate soul, freed from his former habits.

• verb

  The council hopes to regenerate the derelict harbour district with new housing.

• adjective

  The novel follows a regenerate criminal who devotes his later years to charity.

Where does regenerate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb regenerare, meaning 'to bring forth again' or 'to create anew', formed from the prefix re-, meaning 'again', joined to generare, 'to beget, produce, or bring into being'. That generare was itself rooted in genus, a noun meaning 'birth, race, or kind', the same ancestor that gives us 'generate', 'genus', 'genesis', and 'generation'. When it entered English in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries it carried a strongly religious sense, describing a soul that had been spiritually reborn, before it broadened to the modern biological and mechanical meanings of growing, restoring, or renewing something that was lost or worn out. The spelling keeps the single, soft 'g' of the gener root, which is the part learners must remember; the trap is the unstressed middle vowel, since 'gener' is pronounced with a faint schwa that gives no clear clue to the letter 'e'. Knowing that the heart of the word is the family of 'generate' and 'generation' anchors that vowel and the smooth -ate ending.

How the word is built

• re- (again)
• gener (from Latin generare/genus: to beget, birth)
• -ate (verb-forming suffix)