reconstruction
Pluralreconstructions (some meanings)
- 1The work of rebuilding something or returning it to the condition it was in before.
Reconstruction of the bridge began as soon as the floodwaters receded.
The reconstruction effort drew volunteers from across the state.
Similarrebuilding, restoration, renovation, repair
Oppositedestruction, demolition
Note
Scale is what separates this from mere repair. Brian Haresnape, writing on railway stations in 1962, describes a scheme to improve existing buildings that "finished up as virtually a complete reconstruction" because the original structure was unsound. The word also reaches beyond masonry. Barbie Latza Nadeau (2024) writes of the reconstruction of the fascist party under Italy's Scelba law. Used before another noun, it forms reconstruction work.
- 2A rebuilt or re-created version of something as it once was, such as a model of an ancient building.
The exhibit centers on a meticulous reconstruction of a Roman bathhouse.
Archaeologists displayed reconstructions of the tools found at the site.
Similarreplica, re-creation, model, reproduction
- 3A re-enactment or retelling of the events thought to have led up to a particular outcome.
Detectives staged a reconstruction of the crash to test the driver's account.
The documentary's reconstruction of the final hours drew heavily on diary entries.
Similarreenactment, re-creation, simulation
- 4A model representing an unattested unit of language, such as a phoneme, a morpheme, or a word, worked out by comparing related languages.
Linguists proposed a reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European word for 'wheel'.
Dictionaries print reconstructions with an asterisk to show the forms are not attested in any text.
Note
In historical linguistics the word names a hypothesis, not a recovered relic. Unlike a rebuilt object, nothing old survives to be restored. Linguists reconstruct at a particular level, such as a proto-language, and judge each form by the languages that support it. Robert A. Blust's Austronesian Comparative Dictionary (2016) observes that many of Dempwolff's reconstructions rest only on languages of western Indonesia.
Practice
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Origin
Formed from the prefix re- ('again') and construction.