reverse engineer

verb

reverse engineered; reverse engineering; reverse engineers

transitive verb

: to disassemble and examine or analyze in detail (a product or device) to discover the concepts involved in manufacture usually in order to produce something similar

reverse engineering noun

Examples of reverse engineer in a Sentence

They reverse engineered the software.

Recent Examples on the Web

Distillation lets someone reverse engineer an AI model just by using it and watching its responses. — Peter Hall, Scientific American, 7 Oct. 2026

Then reverse engineer the creative around that person’s reasons for buying. — Jonathan Durante, Forbes.com, 5 Oct. 2026

His answer was, in a sense, to navigate them backward, reverse engineering some of the routes and shell corporations that brought American goods to Afghanistan in the first place. — Emily Watlington, ARTnews.com, 24 Sep. 2026

This creates a window for threat actors to attempt to rapidly reverse engineer patches and develop exploits ahead of downstream stable releases. — Dan Goodin, ArsTechnica, 9 Sep. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1973, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for reverse engineer

• adhere
• ameer
• amir
• appear
• arrear
• astir
• austere
• career
• cashier
• cohere
• compere
• emir