Word.ws English Dictionary

reprogram

reprogram verb: to program anew or differently.

Verb

reprogram (third-person singular simple present reprograms, present participle reprogramming or (rare) reprograming, simple past and past participle reprogrammed or (rare) reprogramed)

  1. (transitive) To program anew or differently.
    • Installing a new hard drive would require a modchip that can reprogram or bypass the hard drive lock.2003, Andrew Huang, Hacking the Xbox: an introduction to reverse engineering
    Synonyms:
    recode
  2. (broadly, transitive) To make a fundamental change to the behaviour or habits of.
  3. To shift funds appropriated for one government program to a different government program.
    • Technically, DOE did not need authority to reprogram the funds as long as the spending didn't span different appropriation line items.1993, Diane Publishing Company, Defense Conversion: Redirecting R & D, page 110
    • This deferral is reported to give Congress time to consider a request to reprogram the funds.1976, Gerald R. Ford, “Special Message to the Congress Reporting on Budget Decisions and Referrals”, in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Gerald R. Ford, published 1979, page 2097

Examples of reprogram in a sentence

  • The robotic vacuum cleaner proved to be hackable, so we reprogrammed two of them to race each other.
  • The reprogramming of parental methylomes is essential for embryonic development.
  • One of the most promising routes in this regard is the generation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) by reprogramming cells.

All 10 example sentences with reprogram

Synonyms of reprogram

Forms of reprogram

third-person singular presentreprograms
present participlereprogramming
past participlereprogrammed
pastreprogrammed
alternative formreprogramme
present participle (rare)reprograming
past participle (rare)reprogramed
past (rare)reprogramed

Past tense of reprogram: reprogrammed

Origin of reprogram

From re- + program.

Words formed from reprogram

Questions about reprogram

What does reprogram mean?
Reprogram means to program anew or differently.
What part of speech is reprogram?
Reprogram is a verb.
What is the past tense of reprogram?
The past tense of reprogram is reprogrammed.

Words near reprogram in the dictionary

  1. reprofiled
  2. reprofiles
  3. reprofiling
  4. reprofilings
  5. reprogenetics
  6. reprogram
  7. reprogramed
  8. reprograming
  9. reprogramings
  10. reprogrammability
  11. reprogrammable

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: reprogram (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: “reprogram.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/reprogram. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.