Resurrected

How to spell resurrected

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce resurrected

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does resurrected mean?

1. verbBrought something back into use or activity after it had ended or been abandoned.

Resurrected in a sentence

• The agency resurrected an old slogan for the autumn campaign.

• Engineers resurrected the stalled bridge project after a decade of delay.

Where does resurrected come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word goes back to the Latin verb resurgere, meaning 'to rise again', built from the prefix re- 'again' and surgere 'to rise' (the same root that gives us 'surge' and 'insurrection'). Its past participle stem resurrectus produced the noun resurrectio, which early Christian Latin used for the rising of the dead, and that religious sense dominated the word's history for centuries. English borrowed the noun 'resurrection' through Old French in the 1200s, and the back-formed verb 'resurrect' only appeared much later, around the 1700s, meaning to bring back to life or revive something. The form 'resurrected' simply adds the regular -ed ending to that verb. A useful spelling cue is that the buried surge inside it is the Latin surgere, and the two r letters belong to two different pieces: the re- prefix and the sur- of the root.

How the word is built

• re- (again)
• surrect (from Latin surgere, to rise)
• -ed (past tense/participle)