Review

How to spell review

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce review

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does review mean?

1. nounA critical assessment or formal examination of something, or a written evaluation of a work or product.
2. verbTo examine, assess, or look over something again, often to evaluate or correct it.

Review in a sentence

• noun

  The restaurant earned a glowing review in the weekend paper.

• verb

  Please review the contract before you sign it.

• noun

  Her manager scheduled a performance review for next month.

• verb

  The committee will review each application next week.

Where does review come from?

Language of origin: French

This word traces back to the Latin verb videre, meaning 'to see', combined with the prefix re-, meaning 'again' or 'back'. It reached English through the Old French revue, the past participle of revoir, 'to see again', which entered the language around the late 1400s. The earliest English uses described looking over troops or military forces, an inspection sense that survives today in phrases like 'a military review'. From that idea of surveying something carefully, the meaning broadened to examining anything afresh, and by the seventeenth century it covered the written critical assessment of a book or play. The same videre root gives us 'vision', 'video' and 'visit', and the give-away spelling clue is the clean re- prefix sitting in front of 'view', so the word is built from two familiar English pieces rather than anything exotic.

How the word is built

• re- (again, back)
• view (to look or see, from Latin videre 'to see')