re-member

verb

To reconstitute or reassemble that which has been dismembered.

Meanings

verbre-member (third-person singular simple present re-members, present participle re-membering, simple past and past participle re-membered)

present singular third person re-members · participle present re-membering · participle past re-membered · past re-membered · alternative remember

  1. uncommonTo reconstitute or reassemble that which has been dismembered.

    This metaphysical flesh is the wooden phallus with which Isis re-members Osiris, it is ...

    1973, Kenneth John Criqui, Dreams of the Swift Queen Turning Back on Herself Through the Gates, page 35
    3 more examples

    Eventually Isis manages to recover all but one of the pieces (the phallus, of course, being the missing part, but she magically fashions a replacement for it) and to re-member Osiris, who then becomes god of the afterworld.

    1988, Christine Downing, Psyche's Sisters: Reimagining the Meaning of Sisterhood, HarperCollins

    To dismember is to tear apart; / To re-member is to put back together. / The old must be dismembered / So that which was prior to it / May be remembered. / Therefore, to re-mind is / To dismember and then re-member.

    2012, Roy Melvyn, The Lost Writings of Wu Hsin: Pointers to Non Duality in Five Volumes, Lulu Press, Inc, →ISBN

    This scene re-members the Rembrandt painting The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp from 1632. The image honours the once famous Dutch physician, his contribution to medical science and a number of his contemporary surgeon colleagues who are also captured in the moment. It suggests that medicine has long depended on re-animating corpses for its own epistemological and legitimising ends.

    2020, Martin O’Brien, Gianna Bouchard, “Zombie sickness: contagious ideas in performance”, in Alan Bleakley, editor, Routledge Handbook of the Medical Humanities, Routledge, →ISBN, part IV (Medicine as performance and public engagement)

Origin

Cite this entry
APA

re-member. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/re-member

MLA

“re-member.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/re-member. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “re-member,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/re-member.

Source: re-member on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.