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rehabilitate

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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English

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Medieval Latin rehabilitātus, perfect passive participle of Latin rehabilitō.

Pronunciation

Verb

rehabilitate (third-person singular simple present rehabilitates, present participle rehabilitating, simple past and past participle rehabilitated)

  1. (transitive) To restore (someone) to their former state, reputation, possessions, status etc. [from 16th c.]
  2. (transitive) To vindicate; to restore the reputation or image of (a person, concept etc.). [from 18th c.]
  3. (transitive) To return (something) to its original condition. [from 19th c.]
  4. (transitive, Canada, US, construction) To restore or repair (a vehicle, building); to make habitable or usable again. [from 19th c.]
    • 1992, Alavattāgoḍa Pēmadāsa, Cumaratunga, the Unknown: Hidden Facets of His Scientific Profile, page 115:
      Cumaratunga was so furious that he intensified his campaign for revitalizing the traditional practices of asweddumization, so that neglected arable land could be rehabilitated, and a degenerating economy restructured and rejuvenated.
    • 1996 November, “Doggone it, it's a new ceramic binder”, in DOE this Month, page 14:
      Engineers are considering using the blowable insulation to rehabilitate residential buildings in Chicago under an Argonne partnership with Bethel New Life, a Chicago community economic initiative.
  5. (transitive, criminology) To restore to (a criminal etc.) the necessary training and education to allow for a successful reintegration into society; to retrain. [from 19th c.]
  6. (transitive, medicine) To return (someone) to good health after illness, addiction, etc. [from 19th c.]
    • 2002 March 24, Sherri Daley, “Finding Homes for Horses That Were Left for Dead”, in The New York Times‎:
      Patty Wahlers, 40, is the founder and director of Horse of Connecticut, an organization situated on a 46-acre farm in Washington that rescues and rehabilitates neglected horses and puts them up for adoption.
  7. (intransitive) To go through such a process; to recover. [from 20th c.]
    • 1978, Richard Nixon, RN: the Memoirs of Richard Nixon‎, Grosset & Dunlap, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, →OL, page 43:
      Truman made us all feel welcome and relaxed as we shook hands with him. We sat around the desk, and he spoke very earnestly about the necessity of rehabilitating Europe and emphasized his concern that peaceful German production should be encouraged.

Quotations

  • 1967, “Alice's Restaurant”, in Alice's Restaurant, performed by Arlo Guthrie:
    I turned over the piece of paper, and there, there on the other side, in the middle of the other side, away from everything else on the other side, in parenthesis, capital letters, quotated, read the following words:
    (“KID, HAVE YOU REHABILITATED YOURSELF?”)
  • 2006, Ann Coulter, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, Crown Forum, →ISBN:
    Attempts to rehabilitate liberals on this point are futile. It's in their DNA.

Derived terms

Translations

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Spanish

Verb

rehabilitate

  1. second-person singular voseo imperative of rehabilitar combined with te

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