rendition
noun
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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."
Cite this Entry
“Rendition.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rendition. Accessed 21 Aug. 2026.
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