Word.ws English Dictionary

reinventing the wheel

reinventing the wheel noun: the action of taking the effort to devise a solution to a problem, unaware of the fact that someone else has already devised the same solution to the same problem. Also the present participle and gerund of reinvent the wheel.

Noun

reinventing the wheel (uncountable)

  1. The action of taking the effort to devise a solution to a problem, unaware of the fact that someone else has already devised the same solution to the same problem.

Also used as

reinventing the wheel is also the present participle and gerund of reinvent the wheel.

Questions about reinventing the wheel

What does reinventing the wheel mean?
Reinventing the wheel means the action of taking the effort to devise a solution to a problem, unaware of the fact that someone else has already devised the same solution to the same problem.
What part of speech is reinventing the wheel?
Reinventing the wheel is a noun.

Words near reinventing the wheel in the dictionary

  1. reinvent the wheel
  2. reinventable
  3. reinvented
  4. reinvented the wheel
  5. reinventing
  6. reinventing the wheel
  7. reinvention
  8. reinvention of the wheel
  9. reinventional
  10. reinventions
  11. reinventions of the wheel

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: reinventing the wheel (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “reinventing the wheel.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/reinventing_the_wheel. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.