Redistribute

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /ˌɹiː.dɪˈstɹɪb.juːt/

Definitions

1. To distribute something in a new or different way, often spreading resources or items across a different group or area
2. To allocate or spread out things again, changing the original arrangement to achieve a different balance or sharing
3. To give out or share things anew, moving items or resources from one place or group to another in a revised way

Etymology: Redistribute is about as transparent as English compounds get: the prefix "re-", meaning "again" or "back," attached to "distribute." Distribute itself came into English from Latin "distribuere," meaning to divide up and assign, built from "dis-" (apart) and "tribuere" (to allot or assign). So the core idea is simply to apportion something once more. The prefix is the real story here. Its ancestry runs back through Latin "re-" to very old Indo-European roots, and it passed into English through Old French, where it was already common in verbs for repetition. English then attached it freely to existing verbs, so redistribute is a later formation built on a word that was already well established. The sense is exactly what the parts suggest. Redistributing changes the original arrangement, whether of wealth, seats, workloads, or land, so that the division comes out differently the second time. The word carries no hidden twist; it means what it says.

Synonyms: reallocate, reassign, distribute again