retrain

/ɹiːˈtɹeɪn/

retrain verb: to train again; especially, to train or study in a new subject or job.

Verb

retrain (third-person singular simple present retrains, present participle retraining, simple past and past participle retrained)

(ambitransitive) To train again; especially, to train or study in a new subject or job
- New York City's largest hospital has agreed to retrain some unionized employees whose jobs were to be eliminated under an austerity drive, the hospital and its largest labor union said yesterday.1989 February 25, “Hospital Will Retrain Workers to Save Jobs”, in The New York Times
- In 1995, Sharon Brown and her husband, Daryck, founded Environmental and Occupational Safety Services at their kitchen table. The company, which retrains workers in the fields of environmental engineering and cleanup, started to grow by winning contracts from the state of New Jersey and later...2009 October 7, Sharon McLoone, “Building a Company on Government Contracts”, in The New York Times

IPA/ˈɹiːtɹeɪn/

retrain (plural retrains)

An instance of training again.
- This adds a bit of complexity as it means that our solution should not retrain for every request coming in but be able to determine whether a retrain is worth it for a given request or whether the model is already up to date.2021, Andrew P. McMahon, Machine Learning Engineering with Python, page 221

If we choose to change our diets and consistently eat healthier foods we retrain our brains, and the foods we initially found distasteful will become enjoyable.2018, Timothy R. Jennings, The Aging Brain, →ISBN, page 81:
The process of retraining a large volume of pilots, who have been idle for different periods of time over the past year is complex and challenging.2021 May 7, Ceylan Yeginsu, “‘It’s Not Quite Like Riding a Bike’: Pilots Get Ready to Fly Again”, in The New York Times:
For about $1,000 per student annually, the program retrained teachers and administrators and paid for new classroom materials, better aligned to cognitive research.2023 December 4, Dana Goldstein, “What Costs $1,000 Per Student and Might Help Children Learn to Read?”, in The New York Times:

Verb
third-person singular present	retrains
present participle	retraining
past participle	retrained
past	retrained
Noun
plural	retrains

From re- + train.

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

What does retrain mean?: Retrain means to train again; especially, to train or study in a new subject or job.
How do you use retrain in a sentence?: If we choose to change our diets and consistently eat healthier foods we retrain our brains, and the foods we initially found distasteful will become enjoyable.
What part of speech is retrain?: Retrain can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce retrain?: Retrain is pronounced /ɹiːˈtɹeɪn/.
What is the past tense of retrain?: The past tense of retrain is retrained.

Adapted from Wiktionary: retrain (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: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-retrain.wav.

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