regenerate
verb /rɪˈdʒɛnəreɪt 
/ [with object]
/ [with object]1(Of a living organism) grow (new tissue) after loss or damage: the lizard has to find the wherewithal to regenerate its tail...
- Even more important, why can't we regenerate tissue to repair damaged organs like our heart or lungs?
- Fish and amphibians can regenerate optic nerve tissue, so Benowitz and his colleagues examined goldfish and found two compounds essential to this process.
- Glucosamine is thought to be chondroprotective, as well as an agent that restores cartilage by providing the material needed for chondrocytes to regenerate cartilage tissue.
1.1 [no object] (Of an organ or tissue) grow again: once destroyed, brain cells do not regenerate...
- The point is that once upon a time we didn't think that brains could regenerate.
- The researchers identified and harvested stem cells from the brains of adult mice and encouraged them to grow by mimicking the way the brain naturally regenerates.
- It is possible to split the liver into two segments that can be shared between two recipients because the liver regenerates.
2Bring new and more vigorous life to (an area, industry, institution, etc.); revive, especially in economic terms: the money will be used to regenerate the heart of the town...
- Longer term there were plans to regenerate the area with residential, retail and leisure developments.
- The government's plans to regenerate the area were announced in March last year by Tony Blair and John Prescott.
- It will help regenerate the area and bring in vast numbers of visitors who will boost the borough's economy.
Synonyms
revive, revitalize, renew, restore, breathe new life into, revivify, rejuvenate, reanimate, resuscitate, reawaken, rekindle, kick-start, uplift, change radically, improve, amend;
reorganize, reconstruct, renovate, overhaul
informal give a shot in the arm to
2.1(Especially in Christian use) give a new and higher spiritual nature to: he believed that it was possible to regenerate people...
- Even though we are regenerated by the Holy Spirit of God, redeemed by the atoning work of Christ, and adopted as children of our heavenly Father, we still, so long as we draw breath in this world, have the residue of sin within us.
- He had been kept by two factors - he had been regenerated by the Spirit of God and he heard Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones preach on his regular sorties into Wales.
- On the one hand he had been regenerated by the Spirit of God, and so was being taught by God.
3 (usually as adjective regenerated) Chemistry Precipitate (a natural polymer, especially cellulose or a protein) as fibres following chemical processing: regenerated cellulose...
- In a series of transformations, the four-carbon compound is regenerated, carbon dioxide is released, and ATP, NADH, and FADH 2 are formed.
- The catalytic enzyme is regenerated after each activation and able to react anew with additional prodrug molecules.
- If the phosphorylated enzyme contains methyl or ethyl groups, the enzyme is regenerated in several hours by hydrolysis.
adjective /rɪˈdʒɛn(ə)rət /
/Reformed or reborn, especially in a spiritual or moral sense: he was not truly regenerate...
- Gospel preaching is God's ordained way of reaching men and women, regenerate or unregenerate.
- Original sin, he said, turned the human heart into a fomes peccati (tinderbox or powder keg of sin), operative at all times, even in the regenerate.
- Engelsma also rejected the charge in a listener's question that the Protestant Reformed person seeks to determine whether a person is regenerate before reaching out to them.
Derivatives
regenerator
/ noun ...- Duo-Derm Oil contains essential oils of lavender and frankincense which are powerful skin regenerators.
- Gearing up for the Rotary Park Restoration Walk next Saturday are bush regenerators Graham Read, Rosemary Joseph and Dennis Sellars with Cr Frank Swientek.
- Dave Meneer, marketing director of The Eden Project, said: ‘One of the key objectives for us and our funders was that we quickly became an economic regenerator for the local community and that we delivered for the wider region too.’
Origin
Late Middle English (as an adjective): from Latin regeneratus 'created again', past participle of regenerare, from re- 'again' + generare 'create'. The verb dates from the mid 16th century.