Rethinking

How to spell rethinking

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce rethinking

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does rethinking mean?

1. verbConsidering something again in order to change a plan, opinion, or design.

Rethinking in a sentence

• The company is rethinking its entire pricing strategy after a weak quarter.

• She spent the weekend rethinking her decision to move abroad.

Where does rethinking come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The core of this word is the native English verb think, which descends from the Old English thencan, meaning 'to conceive in the mind' or 'to consider'. That verb belonged to the Germanic family and was closely tied to thanc, the source of 'thought' and 'thank', since to think well of someone and to thank them were once linked ideas. The prefix re- comes from Latin and carries the sense of 'again' or 'back', and English freely attaches it to ordinary verbs to mean repeating or reversing an action. Joined together, rethinking simply means thinking something through afresh, and the spelling is regular: keep the single t from re-, the th of think, and the standard -ing ending. The one quiet trap is remembering that there is no hidden letter between re and think; it is just the two pieces run together.

How the word is built

• re- (again)
• think (Old English root: to conceive in the mind)
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix)