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relive

UK/ɹiːˈlɪv/US/ɹiːˈlɪv/
verbB2+Common in everyday speech and writing · #6,472 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: reliving, relives, relived

To relive is to experience something again in memory. Relive the moment, relive the past, relive it every night.

It means feeling it again rather than merely remembering, which is the whole difference — and reliving a traumatic event involuntarily is a defining feature of post-traumatic stress, so the word carries real clinical weight. Of a happy memory it is warm. Note that relive is stressed on the second syllable, which distinguishes it from anything else.

Definitions of relive

  1. 1verbreliveTo experience something again in memory.B2+

    “Every time he hears that song, he relives the night they first met.”

relive is a re-experiencing.

Where it comes from

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *leyp-

  2. Middle English

    lefe

  3. English

    live

  4. English, today

    relive

Built from

  • lifian · Old English — to live; be alive

From re- + live. live comes from Middle English lefe. From Middle English lefe, lifen, libbe, libben, live, luvien, lyven, from Old English libban, lifian (“to live; be alive”), from Proto-West Germanic libbjan, from Proto-Germanic libjaną (“to live”), from Proto-Indo-European leyp- (“to stick”). 2

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Word Building

Practise this word

relive in the wild

  • Aldwinkle and her entourage, members of a cultural elite who are gathered in an Italian palace to relive the glories of the Renaissance.

    Those Barren Leaves

  • Do Over is an American fantasy sitcom television series created by Kenny Schwartz and Rick Wiener about a man who gets a chance to relive his childhood.

    Do Over

  • Sheila and Gary are on a one-day time loop, as she wants to relive their 'meet cute' over and over.

    Meet Cute (film)

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the lifian family

live

relive — used about once every 1,963 pages · #6,472 · point at the bar for the others

  • outlive