Rewind

How to spell rewind

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce rewind

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does rewind mean?

1. verbTo wind a tape, film, or recording back towards the beginning, or to return a recording to an earlier point.
2. nounThe act of winding a recording back, or a control that does so.

Rewind in a sentence

• verb

  She had to rewind the tape to find the missing line of dialogue.

• noun

  A quick rewind let them hear the chorus one more time.

• verb

  Please rewind the footage so we can review the goal again.

• noun

  The remote control had a worn label on the rewind button.

Where does rewind come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent English compound built from the prefix re-, taken from Latin and meaning 'back' or 'again', joined to the native verb 'wind', which goes back to Old English windan, meaning 'to turn, twist, or coil'. That same windan gave us the way we talk about a winding road and the act of winding a clock. The combined verb 'rewind' is comparatively young: it rose to everyday use in the twentieth century alongside reel-to-reel tape, film stock, and the audio and video cassettes whose ribbons had to be wound back to the start. Because the second half is the verb 'wind' (rhyming with 'find') rather than 'wind' the breeze, the spelling stays the same even though older recording technology has faded. The persistent spelling trap is simply remembering it is one solid word with a single 'w', not 're-wind' with a hyphen or any doubled letter.

How the word is built

• re- (back, again)
• wind (to turn or coil)