Recycled

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Processed so materials can be used again instead of being discarded
2. Treated in a way that allows materials to be reused after their initial use
3. Transformed to recover and reuse materials rather than throwing them away

Etymology: The "re-" in "recycle" is an ordinary prefix meaning "again" or "back", a sense it has carried in English since the Middle Ages. The "cycle" half traces a longer journey: it comes from ancient Greek "kúklos", meaning "circle" or "wheel", which passed through Late Latin "cyclus" and entered Middle English as "cicle" before the spelling settled into the modern form. A cycle, in other words, began as a physical ring, and the idea of something coming round again was built into the word from the start. "Recycle" itself is simply "re-" attached to "cycle", so the sense of returning something to a circuit of use follows directly from its parts. Its past tense and past participle, "recycled", are formed in the regular way from the verb, and both share that same circular history.

Synonyms: reprocessed, repurposed, reused, converted, restored

Antonyms: wasted, discarded, thrown away