Rehabilitation

How to spell rehabilitation

14 letters · 6 syllables

How to pronounce rehabilitation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does rehabilitation mean?

1. nounThe process of restoring someone to health or normal function after illness, injury, or addiction.
2. nounThe act of restoring something or someone to a former, proper condition, such as a building, a reputation, or legal standing.

Rehabilitation in a sentence

• After the operation she spent six weeks in rehabilitation rebuilding her strength.

• The council approved funding for the rehabilitation of the derelict riverside warehouse.

• The clinic offers a structured rehabilitation programme for people recovering from addiction.

• The prison system claims that rehabilitation of offenders reduces reoffending.

Where does rehabilitation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb habilitare, meaning 'to make fit' or 'to enable', which itself grew from habilis, 'easily handled' or 'suitable', and ultimately from habere, 'to have or hold'. The prefix re- adds the sense of 'again', so the whole idea is one of restoring someone or something to a fit and usable state once more. It entered English through French and Medieval Latin around the seventeenth century, at first in a legal sense: to rehabilitate a person was to restore them to lost rights, rank, or reputation. Only later did the medical meaning of restoring health and function after injury or illness become the everyday one. The same habere root sits quietly inside familiar relatives like 'habit', 'ability', and 'able', and remembering that habil- core helps with the spelling, since the trap is the long unstressed middle: re-ha-bil-i-ta-tion.

How the word is built

• re- (again)
• habilitat- (from Latin habilitare: to make fit or able)
• -ion (noun-forming suffix)