Remix

How to spell remix

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce remix

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does remix mean?

1. nounA new version of a recording made by rearranging or adding to its original tracks.
2. verbTo create a new version of a recording by rearranging or adding to its tracks.

Remix in a sentence

• noun

  The club played a faster remix of the original single.

• verb

  The label asked a famous DJ to remix the band's latest track.

• noun

  Her favourite remix stretched the chorus into a long dance break.

• verb

  She learned to remix old songs using software on her laptop.

Where does remix come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is a modern English coinage built from the prefix re-, meaning 'again' or 'back', and the verb 'mix'. The verb 'mix' arrived in late Middle English, probably as a back-formation from the adjective 'mixt', which came through Old French from the Latin mixtus, the past participle of miscere meaning 'to blend or mingle together'. The straightforward re- prefix simply adds the sense of doing that blending over again. 'Remix' itself is much younger than its parts: it grew up in the recording studios of the 1970s, when sound engineers began producing alternative versions of songs by recombining the separate recorded tracks. From that music context it has since spread to mean reworking any existing material into a fresh arrangement, and because both halves are common English elements the spelling holds no real surprises.

How the word is built

• re- (again)
• mix (to combine, from Old English/Latin miscere 'to mix')