Meaning & use
relive
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Meanings
verbtransitive
To experience something from the past again, vividly, in your memory or imagination.
Grammar: Takes an object: relive the moment.
Patterns
- relive something
- relive memories of something
Looking at the photos, she relived their honeymoon.
Veterans often relive painful events in their dreams.
He loved to relive the winning goal over and over.
verbtransitive
To go through an experience again in real life, especially through a repeat visit or event.
Grammar: Often means repeating by choice: relive your youth.
Patterns
- relive your youth
We went back to the lake to relive our childhood summers.
The festival lets fans relive the music of the 1980s.
Word forms
| third person singular | relives |
|---|---|
| past tense | relived |
| past participle | relived |
| -ing form | reliving |
Common combinations
- relive the past
- He tried to relive the past through old letters.
- relive a memory
- She would relive the memory each time she heard the song.
- relive the moment
- I want to relive that moment forever.
- relive your youth
- The reunion let them relive their youth.
- relive the trauma
- Testifying forced her to relive the trauma.
Synonyms and how they differ
- recall
- Recall means simply bringing a fact to mind, while relive means experiencing it again with feelings.
- remember
- Remember is the general word, and it does not imply the vivid, repeated experience that relive does.
- revisit
- Revisit can mean going back to a place or topic, whereas relive focuses on the experience itself.
- reenact
- Reenact means to perform an event again, usually deliberately in public, whereas relive can happen only in the mind.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: relive or relieve?
relive vs relieve
Relieve means to ease pain or worry, and it is a different word that sounds similar to relive.
Practice
Sitting in the old classroom, he began to ___ his school days.
Choose one answer.
Relive means to experience the past again in memory. Relieve sounds similar but means to ease something, and revive means to bring back to life.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “relive”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.