Other forms: reconstructed, reconstructing, reconstructs
To reconstruct is to build something again — or to work out how events happened. Putting the pieces back where they were.
The building sense is plain, so reconstructing a bombed church means rebuilding it as it was. The investigative sense is the more interesting one, since police reconstruct a crime and historians reconstruct a battle, both meaning to assemble an account from fragments. Medicine has reconstructive surgery, which rebuilds damaged tissue. The noun reconstruction covers all of it, and a reconstruction on television is a staged version of events.
1verbbuildTo build something again after damage.
“The bridge was reconstructed in the 1950s.”
2verbreconstructTo work out how past events took place.
“Investigators reconstructed the last hour of the flight.”
From re- + construct.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA