refurbish
verb
Did you know?
As seems proper given how English prefixes work, before you could refurbish something you could furbish it. That shorter word was borrowed into Middle English in the 14th century from Anglo-French as furbisshen; it shares a distant relative with the Old High German verb furben, meaning "to polish." In its earliest uses furbish also meant "to polish," but it developed an extended sense of "to renovate" shortly before English speakers created refurbish with the same meaning in the 17th century. These days refurbish is the more common of the two words, although furbish does continue to be used.
Examples of refurbish in a Sentence
Sean Evans, Robb Report, 6 Apr. 2024
From there, the shuttle could be refurbished and flown again, theoretically driving down the cost of each mission.
—Jackie Wattles, CNN, 5 Apr. 2024
Mast removed the 1950s belts and rotors, refurbished them and put them back.
—Lydia Depillis, New York Times, 4 Apr. 2024
The historic theater was completely refurbished, but more impressively, lifted from its original ground-floor position to a higher floor within the hotel.
—Ramsey Qubein, Forbes, 30 Mar. 2024
Of the some 30 original attractions created by artists, 17 have been refurbished, and there is hope that more of them can be added to the spectacle for later iterations.
—Philip Kennicott, Washington Post, 25 Mar. 2024
The couple refurbished the adobe, and after Pollard died in 1934 Fisher continued to refurbish what is today a Vista landmark.
—Linda McIntosh, San Diego Union-Tribune, 2 Apr. 2024
Back in the 1980s and ‘90s, with the support of city leaders, crumbling SROs were refurbished and turned into permanent homeless housing.
—Liam Dillon, Los Angeles Times, 31 Mar. 2024
Those who have extra cash to burn may not be too concerned with rebuilding or refurbishing their homes if something were to happen, but without insurance the cost can become insurmountable.
—Sydney Lake, Fortune, 28 Mar. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'refurbish.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near refurbish
Cite this Entry
“Refurbish.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/refurbish. Accessed 19 Apr. 2024.
Copy CitationKids Definition
refurbish
verb
Share