Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To go back to a former condition, practice, subject, or belief.
  • intransitive verb To resume using something that has been disused.
  • intransitive verb Law To be returned to the former owner or to the former owner's heirs. Used of money or property.
  • intransitive verb Genetics To undergo reversion.
  • intransitive verb Chiefly South Asian To reply.
  • intransitive verb To cause to go back to a former condition, practice, subject, or belief.
  • intransitive verb Law To return (an estate, for example) to the grantor or the grantor's heirs or successor.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One who or that which reverts; colloquially, one who is reconverted.
  • noun In music, return; recurrence; antistrophe.
  • noun That which is reverted. Compare introvert, n.
  • To turn about or back; reverse the position or direction of.
  • To alter to the contrary; reverse.
  • To cast back; turn to the past.
  • To turn back; face or look backward.
  • To come back to a former place or position; return.
  • To return, as to a former habit, custom, or mode of thought or conduct.
  • In biology, to go back to an earlier, former, or primitive type; reproduce the characteristics of antecedent stages of development; undergo reversion; exhibit atavism.
  • To go back in thought or discourse, as to a former subject of consideration; recur.
  • In law, to return to the donor, or to the former proprietor or his heirs.
  • In chem., to return from a soluble to an insoluble condition: applied to a change which takes place in certain superphosphates. See reversion, 8.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb To return; to come back.
  • intransitive verb (Law) To return to the proprietor after the termination of a particular estate granted by him.
  • intransitive verb (Biol.) To return, wholly or in part, towards some preëxistent form; to take on the traits or characters of an ancestral type.
  • intransitive verb (Chem.) To change back, as from a soluble to an insoluble state or the reverse.
  • transitive verb To turn back, or to the contrary; to reverse.
  • transitive verb To throw back; to reflect; to reverberate.
  • transitive verb (Chem.) To change back. See Revert, v. i.
  • transitive verb (Alg.) to treat a series, as y = a + bx + cx2 + etc., where one variable y is expressed in powers of a second variable x, so as to find therefrom the second variable x, expressed in a series arranged in powers of y.
  • noun One who, or that which, reverts.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun One who, or that which, reverts.
  • noun A convert to Islam.
  • noun computing The act of reversion (of e.g. a database transaction or source control repository) to an earlier state.
  • verb transitive To turn back, or turn to the contrary; to reverse.
  • verb To throw back; to reflect; to reverberate.
  • verb transitive To cause to return to a former condition.
  • verb intransitive To return; to come back.
  • verb intransitive To return to the possession of.
  • verb transitive To cause (a property or rights) to return to the previous owner.
  • verb intransitive To return to a former practice, condition, belief, etc.
  • verb intransitive, biology To return to an earlier or primitive type or state; to take on the traits or characters of an ancestral type.
  • verb intransitive To change back, as from a soluble to an insoluble state or the reverse.
  • verb intransitive To return to a previous subject of discourse or thought.
  • verb intransitive To convert to Islam.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb go back to a previous state
  • verb undergo reversion, as in a mutation

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English reverten, from Old French revertir, from Vulgar Latin *revertīre, variant of Latin revertere : re-, re- + vertere, to turn; see wer- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French revertir, from Vulgar Latin *revertio, variant of Latin reverto.

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Examples

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  • Does anyone else hate the modern misuse of this to mean reply, respond?

    January 9, 2024