Resurrecting

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The act of restoring a dead being to life ; the process of reviving something that has fallen out of use or memory
2. Bringing a deceased person back to living existence ; reintroducing an idea, practice, or object into current relevance
3. Raising someone or something from death ; making an old or forgotten item active or recognized again

Etymology: Resurrect is a back-formation, and that is the surprising part. English already had "resurrection," borrowed from Latin "resurrectio" and used for centuries, and the verb was built later by working backward from that noun, as if "resurrection" were a derivative of a verb that did not yet exist. The Latin source for the noun is "resurgere," meaning "to rise again," which is also the origin of "resurgent" and "resurgence." The verb resurrect therefore follows the pattern of forming a verb from a noun ending in "-tion," which is why it sounds more like an everyday English verb than a borrowed Latin one. Its base is "surrect," an unused English form, joined to the prefix "re-," meaning "again" or "back." The present participle "resurrecting" simply adds the usual -ing ending to that verb, so it inherits the same meaning: to bring back to life or to revive something that had seemed gone.

Synonyms: reviving, restoring

Antonyms: destroying, killing