Revivificare

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To bring back to life or restore vitality; to invigorate or renew something that has become lifeless or stagnant; to revitalize or regenerate a person, idea, or situation that has lost its energy or strength
2. To restore someone or something to a state of vigor or life; to breathe new energy into a dormant or weakened entity; to rejuvenate an individual or concept that requires revival or renewal
3. To cause a return to life or vigor in a person or thing; to infuse vitality into what has become dull or lifeless; to revitalize an idea or emotion that has faded or diminished

Etymology: "Revivificare" is a Latin verb built from "vivus" (alive) and "facere" (to make or do), so it literally means "to make alive again." English borrowed it in the early 1600s, and the first recorded uses were in medical and alchemical writing, where it described restoring life to a body or to a substance thought to have been deadened. Physicians of the period were interested in resuscitation and in reviving drowned or apparently dead people, so the word carried a concrete, almost clinical sense of bringing breath back into a body. Over the following centuries the meaning loosened. Writers began applying it to ideas, institutions, and moods, so that a tradition or an economy could be "revivified" just as a person could. The verb kept its Latin shape, but it moved from the sickroom and the laboratory into the language of culture and politics, where it now describes restoring energy to something that has gone slack.

Synonyms: revive, resuscitate, revitalize, reanimate, regenerate

Antonyms: kill, destroy, extinguish, stop