Revisitations

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The act of returning to a place or situation after a period of time; the process of reviewing or assessing something again; a recurrence of thoughts or memories about a past event or experience
2. The return to a location or context after having left; the review or new examination of previously encountered concepts; the experience of re-experiencing a significant moment or feeling from the past
3. The act of going back to a former environment or situation; the re-evaluation of previous findings or ideas; the re-emergence of reflections or sentiments related to earlier experiences

Etymology: Revisitation is a plural noun form here, so the core history belongs to its base word. "Revisitations" is simply the plural of "revisitation," which is built from the prefix "re-" and "visitation." The prefix comes from Latin "re-," meaning "again" or "back," and it passed into English through Old French and Middle English as a productive way of adding the sense of repetition to existing words. "Visitation" carries the older and more dramatic history. It descends from Latin "visitatio," a noun from "visitare," meaning "to go to see" or "to look at often." Through Old French it reached Middle English, where it originally covered formal inspections and official visits, and the sense of a divine or supernatural coming was a later development. The word therefore began with the idea of a sanctioned or duty-bound return to a place, and "revisitation" keeps that core notion of going back to something already seen.