reinscribe

verb

re·​in·​scribe ˌrē-ən-ˈskrīb How to pronounce reinscribe (audio)
reinscribed; reinscribing; reinscribes

transitive verb

: to reestablish or rename in a new and especially stronger form or context
how do contemporary writers reimagine or reinscribe the culturally laden figure of the aging woman?Ruth O. Saxton

Examples of reinscribe in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web Civilization, Freud believed, was nothing more than a repetition compulsion, humanity's attempt to replicate and reinscribe its fundamental disunity with nature through the very tools that created that alienation in the first place. Meghan O'Gieblyn, WIRED, 17 Jan. 2023 To recenter the spotlight on her—her audacity, her daring, her drive—and reinscribe her into the historical conversation is also to reconnect ourselves to our own cultural footprint. The New Yorker, 4 Jan. 2023 Redemptionists sought to reinscribe slavery’s power relations between Blacks and whites via racial terror, through Black Codes that disenfranchised Black voters, and by ending federal protection for Black citizenship. Time, 15 Sep. 2022 But as an overarching theory, the idea that humans moved from freedom to stuckness seems to reinscribe some of the schematic evolutionary folktales that the book exists to critique. Virginia Heffernan, Wired, 11 July 2022 The exquisite patterning, the archaic involutions of syntax, the lyricism: Does Sebald’s style reinscribe a sense of human possibility while keeping vigil with the dead? Ben Lerner, The New York Review of Books, 25 Feb. 2021 But Howland seems reluctant to reinscribe the cruelties of these categories: sick and well, normal and abnormal. Katy Waldman, The New Yorker, 5 Jan. 2021 Ever since the Civil War, there’s been a real attempt by white supremacists all over the country to reinsert and reinscribe white supremacy as the ideology and the visual culture of America. New York Times, 15 Oct. 2020 Books such as Twitty’s own, The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South, reinscribe the country’s food legacies, honoring the innovations that black people have contributed for centuries. Hannah Giorgis, The Atlantic, 16 June 2020

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'reinscribe.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

1878, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of reinscribe was in 1878

Dictionary Entries Near reinscribe

Cite this Entry

“Reinscribe.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/reinscribe. Accessed 28 Mar. 2024.

Legal Definition

reinscribe

transitive verb
re·​in·​scribe ˌrē-in-ˈskrīb How to pronounce reinscribe (audio)
in the civil law of Louisiana : to inscribe (as a mortgage) again especially after expiration of the period of inscription (as ten years)

Note: A recorded mortgage or document creating a privilege is reinscribed by filing a notice of reinscription with the recorder.

reinscription
-ˈskrip-shən
noun
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