Word.ws English Dictionary

repurpose

UK/ɹiːˈpɜː.pəs/US/ɹiˈpɝ.pəs/

repurpose verb: to reuse for a different purpose, on a long-term basis, with or without alteration.

Verb

repurpose (third-person singular simple present repurposes, present participle repurposing, simple past and past participle repurposed)

  1. To reuse for a different purpose, on a long-term basis, with or without alteration.
    • The town common was repurposed as a practice field.
    • The church was repurposed as a nightclub by lighting changes and removing the pews, but it never opened.
    Synonyms:
    remodel

Examples of repurpose in a sentence

  • More than half a mile of new tunnels have been excavated, producing nearly 200,000 tonnes of material which is being repurposed as building material in Dartford.2019 October 23, Rail, page 68, photo caption:
  • Tesla has repurposed the lightweight, energy-dense cells that power its cars for huge grid-scale batteries that provide essential backup for renewables.December 13 2021, Molly Ball, Jeffrey Kluger, Alejandro de la Garza, “Elon Musk: Person of the Year 2021”, in Time Magazine, archived from...

All 11 example sentences with repurpose

Synonyms of repurpose

Forms of repurpose

third-person singular presentrepurposes
present participlerepurposing
past participlerepurposed
pastrepurposed
alternative formre-purpose

Past tense of repurpose: repurposed

Origin of repurpose

From re- + purpose.

Words formed from repurpose

Questions about repurpose

What does repurpose mean?
Repurpose means to reuse for a different purpose, on a long-term basis, with or without alteration.
How do you use repurpose in a sentence?
More than half a mile of new tunnels have been excavated, producing nearly 200,000 tonnes of material which is being repurposed as building material in Dartford.
What part of speech is repurpose?
Repurpose is a verb.
How do you pronounce repurpose?
Repurpose is pronounced /ɹiːˈpɜː.pəs/ (UK).
What is the past tense of repurpose?
The past tense of repurpose is repurposed.

Words near repurpose in the dictionary

  1. repurpled
  2. repurples
  3. repurpling
  4. repurposability
  5. repurposable
  6. repurpose
  7. repurposed
  8. repurposer
  9. repurposers
  10. repurposes
  11. repurposing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: repurpose (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-repurpose.ogg.

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