Reinstate

How to spell reinstate

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce reinstate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does reinstate mean?

1. verbTo restore someone or something to a former position, status, or condition.

Reinstate in a sentence

• The company agreed to reinstate the workers who had been wrongly dismissed.

• The council voted to reinstate the bus route that had been cancelled last spring.

Where does reinstate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This verb is built from the prefix re-, meaning 'again' or 'back', attached to the older verb 'instate', which itself joins in- ('into') to 'state'. 'State' descends from the Latin status, meaning 'condition, position, or standing', formed from stare, 'to stand'. To 'instate' someone, recorded in English from the early 1600s, meant to set them into a position or office; adding re- naturally produced 'reinstate', meaning to set them back into that position once more. The same Latin stare ('to stand') quietly underlies a large family of English words, including 'station', 'status', and 'stable', all sharing the idea of standing firm. The spelling trap is simply the seam where the prefix meets the stem: 'rein-state' looks like it might contain 'rein', but it is genuinely re- plus -instate, with the e and the i sitting side by side.

How the word is built

• re- (again)
• in- (into)
• state (from Latin status: condition, standing)