• rejuvenate •
Pronunciation: ree-ju-vê-nayt • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Verb
Meaning: 1. Make youthful again, refresh, reinvigorate, make more lively, pump more life into. 2. Restore to original condition, as 'rejuvenate an old sofa'.
Notes: In order to rejuvenate something, must it have been juvenated before? Well, juvenate is a very rarely used ecclesiastical noun referring to members of some seminaries. It isn't even recognized as a verb. It is, however, a popular name for health clubs and various health supplements.
In Play: The first sense above is used only when talking about people or parts of a person: "Dr. Whangburger's snake oil is guaranteed to rejuvenate even the roughest skin, making anyone's complexion like a baby's." The second sense may be applied to almost anything: "A committee was formed to rejuvenate the wrong side of the tracks in the city."
Word History: This is an English creation comprising re- "again, over" + Latin juvenis "young" + -ate, a verbal suffix. Juvenis comes from Proto-Indo-European yeu-n-, a suffixed form of root yeu- "vital force, youthful vigor". Old English inherited this PIE word via its Germanic ancestors as geong "youthful, young", Modern English young. In German it is now jung "young". It ended up in Sanskrit as yuvan- "young (man)", Lithuanian jaunas "young", and Welsh as ieuanc "young". Latin also rendered the same PIE word as iunior "younger", which ended up in English on the names of boys named after their fathers: John Smith, junior "John Smith, the younger".
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