Recondensing

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The process of causing something to return to a denser state through condensation again; the act of making a vapor or gas change back into a liquid form a second time; an action of compressing or thickening once more
2. The act of retransforming a substance from a gaseous to a liquid state for a second or subsequent time; the process of increasing density by cooling vapor again; the repeated conversion of steam or gas into liquid
3. Causing a vapor to undergo condensation once more to become more compact or liquid; the repeated phase change from gas to liquid state; the procedure of making something denser by cooling and condensing it anew

Etymology: Condense comes from Latin "condensare", meaning to make thick or dense, built from "com-" (together, intensive here) and "densare", from "densus" (thick, close-packed). English took the verb in the sense of thickening or compressing matter, and its later chemical and physical sense, a vapor turning back into liquid, grew naturally out of that idea of pressing things closer together. "Recondense" adds the prefix "re-", meaning again, to that stem. Its literal sense is to become dense once more, and the word is used for a vapor or gas that has already condensed, perhaps been reheated or changed, and then condenses a second time. The Latin "re-" that forms the prefix comes down from a Proto-Italic root, and it passed into English through Old French and Middle English, so the prefix carries the same meaning of repetition that it has in words like "rebuild" and "return".

Synonyms: condensing, liquefying, vaporizing, distilling

Antonyms: evaporating, vaporizing, sublimating, boiling