rendition
noun
David SavoldAndrew Amelinckx 
Did you know?
When a singer performs their rendition of someone else's song, or a chef adds a few twists to someone else’s recipe to concoct their own unique rendition, each is—in a sense—returning: returning to something old in order to create something new. Fittingly, the word rendition, which has been part of English since at least the early 1600s, traces back ultimately to the Latin verb reddere, meaning "to return." Reddere is also the ancestor of the English verb render, whose many meanings include "to give a performance of" and "to give up or yield." Although render took a different path from reddere than did rendition, it's perhaps no surprise that the latter fundamentally means "an act or result of rendering something," and may be applied to everything from a performance, depiction, or translation of something, to a surrender (surrender being another reddere descendent), as in "fugitives awaiting rendition to a neighboring state."
Examples of rendition in a Sentence
Brian Boucher, ARTnews.com, 10 Apr. 2026
In 1996, his wife, Jane Weitzman, began collecting and commissioning artsy renditions of display shoes to showcase in her husband's store's windows.
—Jane Levere, Travel + Leisure, 10 Apr. 2026
The musicians offered an intimate, bluesy rendition of the song, complete with an accordion, while Plant gave the vocals a theatrical flair.
—Emily Zemler, Rolling Stone, 9 Apr. 2026
The new rendition comes just as the 12-track project turns 10 years old.
—Caché McClay, USA Today, 9 Apr. 2026
See All Example Sentences for rendition
Cite this Entry
“Rendition.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rendition. Accessed 15 Apr. 2026.
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