Other forms: recreated, recreating, recreates
To recreate is to make something again as it once was. Recreate the scene, faithfully recreated, recreate the recipe.
It means reproducing something that existed — a recreated interior, a recreated experiment — and the claim is always about faithfulness, which is why the word invites the question of how faithful. Note the hyphenated re-create, sometimes used to keep it distinct from recreation meaning leisure; and that recreation once meant refreshment of the spirit, which is the same word restoring you rather than a scene.
1verbrecreateTo make something again as it once was.
“The museum has recreated a Victorian kitchen, down to the copper pans.”
recreate is a making again.
Latin recreare is re- plus creare, to create — to restore or refresh. Recreation kept the sense of refreshment and recreate the sense of making again.
Latin
recreō — to restore
Middle English
recreate
English, today
recreate
Built from
From Middle English recreate, from the participle stem of Latin recreō (“to restore”), from re- (“re-”) + creō (“to create”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA