Word.ws English Dictionary

restitute

/ˈɹɛstɪtjuːt/

restitute verb: to restore (something) to its former condition.

Verb

restitute (third-person singular simple present restitutes, present participle restituting, simple past and past participle restituted)

  1. (transitive) To restore (something) to its former condition.
    • Near-synonym: reinstitute (sometimes synonymous)
    • Abebaw stated that activities are being done to track down where and with whom the artifacts are collected to return the items that are collected by various institutions and individuals. In this regard, a document listing down these important items was submitted to the United Nations Educational...2025 August 24, “Ethiopian Heritage Authority Intensifies Push to Restitute Looted Artifacts”, in ENA Reliable News Source, Ethiopian News Agency, retrieved 29 Aug 2025
  2. (transitive) To provide recompense for (something).
    • Near-synonyms: repay, compensate, recompensate, recompense
    • […] when Frederick M. (Bantam) Lyons had rapidly and successively requested, perused and restituted the copy of the current issue of the Freeman's Journal and National Press which he had been about to throw away (subsequently thrown away), he had proceeded towards the oriental edifice of the...1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[Episode 17]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC
    1. (transitive) To refund.
      • (Mr Mukando): Mr Speaker, Sir, as a result of Government policy to control prices of certain agricultural products, the co-operative unions are annually allocated subsidy funds by Parliament to restitute them for the handling costs they incur while marketing and distributing those controlled...1983, National Assembly of Zambia, editor, Daily Parliamentary Debates, National Assembly of Zambia, page 2493
      • We were even ordered to restitute the legal costs of the defendants.2004, Brian Haig, Private Sector, →ISBN, page 31

Noun

restitute (plural restitutes)

  1. That which is restored or offered in place of something; a substitute.

restitute meaning in Urdu, Tagalog and Indonesian

restitute in Urdu

بحال کرنا

restitute in Tagalog

To restore or return to former condition
isauli

restitute in Indonesian

To restore or return to former condition
merestitusikan

Examples of restitute in a sentence

  • Efforts to restitute Ethiopian artifacts listed for auction in various countries will involve legally halting them from sale, he added.2025 August 24, “Ethiopian Heritage Authority Intensifies Push to Restitute Looted Artifacts”, in ENA Reliable News Source, Ethiopian News...
  • What I spill in talk or acts rarely is restituted in writing.1966, Anaïs Nin, Incest, published 1993, →ISBN, page 28:
  • [W]hat it represents is the inability of language to restitute the loss of memory.1980, Harold Bloom, Wallace Stevens: The Poems of Our Climate, →ISBN, page 266:
  • Government authorities would also have to write legislation that would recognize the specificity of their suffering and restitute them for their losses.2003, Maud Mandel, In the Aftermath of Genocide: Armenians and Jews in Twentieth-Century France, Duke University Press, →ISBN, page 54:

Synonyms of restitute

2 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of restitute

Forms of restitute

Verb
third-person singular presentrestitutes
present participlerestituting
past participlerestituted
pastrestituted
Noun
pluralrestitutes

Origin of restitute

From Old French restituer, from Latin restituō (“replace, restore”).

Words formed from restitute

Questions about restitute

What does restitute mean?
Restitute means to restore (something) to its former condition.
What is restitute in Urdu?
Restitute in Urdu is بحال کرنا. See Restitute meaning in Urdu.
How do you use restitute in a sentence?
Efforts to restitute Ethiopian artifacts listed for auction in various countries will involve legally halting them from sale, he added.
What part of speech is restitute?
Restitute can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce restitute?
Restitute is pronounced /ˈɹɛstɪtjuːt/.
What is the past tense of restitute?
The past tense of restitute is restituted.

Words near restitute in the dictionary

  1. restitches
  2. restitching
  3. restite
  4. restites
  5. restitutable
  6. restitute
  7. restituted
  8. restitutes
  9. restituting
  10. restitutio ad integrum
  11. restitutio in integrum

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: restitute (page history and authors); restitute (Urdu Wiktionary) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-restitute.wav.

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