Refamiliarize

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To acquaint someone once more with something they had known before but have since forgotten or lost touch with
2. Bringing a person back to a former state of familiarity with a subject, place, or skill they had previously mastered
3. Restoring knowledge or acquaintance with something that had become unfamiliar through disuse or time away

Etymology: "Refamiliarize" is a plain build from three parts that English already had: the prefix "re-", meaning again, the adjective "familiar", and the verb-forming suffix "-ize". Put together, it means to make something familiar again, or to get someone reacquainted with a thing they once knew. "Familiar" itself carries an older sense worth knowing. It comes from Latin "familiaris", meaning belonging to the household, from "familia", the household or servants of a family. A familiar thing was originally one that belonged within the home, and only later came to mean well known to the mind. "Refamiliarize" therefore quietly restores that sense of belonging to what was once known. The suffix "-ize" comes through Latin and Greek, where it turned nouns and adjectives into verbs of making or becoming, so the word is a straightforward chain of English prefix, English root, and classical suffix.

Synonyms: reacquaint, reacclimatize, reintroduce

Antonyms: unfamiliarize, estrange, alienate