How to Use recontextualize in a Sentence

recontextualize

verb
  • Text is a very easy medium to chop up and recontextualize — just take a screenshot and tweet it!
    New York Times, 8 Oct. 2021
  • Oddly enough, this isn’t the first time that the real world has recontextualized one of his films.
    Brian Davids, HollywoodReporter, 9 Jan. 2026
  • On some dessert menus, corn gets recontextualized to play on memory.
    Charlie Kolodziej, Bon Appetit Magazine, 23 Jan. 2026
  • In addition, a stranger will come to town that will shake things up for Sharon and recontextualize both her past and her present.
    Alamin Yohannes, Entertainment Weekly, 18 Oct. 2025
  • Some music has been recontextualized by the war.
    Flora Bigham, ABC News, 19 Apr. 2026
  • And for me what this does is recontextualize and reshowcase the actual work that’s already in the object.
    Sean Santiago, ELLE Decor, 8 June 2022
  • Rossi’s primary goal, then, is to recontextualize Warhol as somebody who had loves and lovers.
    Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter, 7 Mar. 2022
  • But there are also a slew of videos in which students recontextualize the bathroom social space and play with its perception.
    Casey Newton, The Verge, 13 Aug. 2019
  • Sounds can be recontextualized; love can transform.
    Amanda Petrusich, New Yorker, 15 May 2026
  • This was a fascinating way to recontextualize many of the lyrics, with her wide-eyed view of the world now sounding like a cool reclamation of youth.
    William Earl, Variety, 2 Sep. 2025
  • The opening scene of the first movie begins all over again, recontextualized with meaning from the past, like, five combined hours of cinema.
    Rebecca Alter, Vulture, 21 Nov. 2025
  • As the trend spread, creators started recontextualizing the whole premise.
    Hanna Wickes, Charlotte Observer, 6 Apr. 2026
  • Power does not disappear in this image; it is recontextualized.
    Debbie Millman, Time, 7 Jan. 2026
  • As a meme, the captions recontextualize the scene to describe situations where things seem normal at first but go wrong when the saxophones start playing.
    Hanna Wickes, Kansas City Star, 6 Apr. 2026
  • Once again, Stone is trying to recontextualize the primal drives of classic tragedy in the familiar landscape of today.
    Ben Brantley, New York Times, 30 Jan. 2020
  • Part of pushing against such nostalgia requires recontextualizing these works in creative ways.
    Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 23 Oct. 2025
  • The novel really touches on this idea of memory as a tool to recontextualize objects and history.
    Lilyanna D'amato, ARTnews.com, 26 Apr. 2026
  • But this latest morsel from the Austen family may help recontextualize the novelist's work -- and lend it a new relevancy.
    Scottie Andrew, CNN, 16 June 2021
  • Now, songwriting is an exercise at looking inward, using the past to recontextualize the future.
    Steven Edelstone, EW.com, 26 May 2020
  • The palm inspired her to use this highly abundant, resilient, but often discarded element, and recontextualize it.
    Samanta Helou Hernandez, Los Angeles Times, 9 Dec. 2022
  • Have there been moments that have recontextualized your past Marvel experiences?
    Brian Davids, HollywoodReporter, 27 Sep. 2025
  • Described as a satirical musical, the movie will reinterpret and recontextualize some of Williams’ songs.
    Manori Ravindran, Variety, 25 Aug. 2022
  • Season one’s twist that Sugar is an alien recontextualized the entire series, and while there’s a couple cool twists in season two, the writers didn’t try to one-up themselves to that degree.
    Brian Davids, HollywoodReporter, 27 June 2026
  • On one side are Peria’s modern-day images; on the other, her father’s archival photos—each one scratched, sculpted, and recontextualized into new meaning.
    Lee Sharrock, Forbes.com, 5 Aug. 2025
  • Long dismissed as fussy or old-fashioned, brooches are being recontextualized precisely because of those associations.
    Frances Solá-Santiago, InStyle, 16 Jan. 2026
  • Her achievement here is not to reinvent the coming-of-age narrative so much as recontextualize it, refusing the temptations of solipsism that can sometimes seep into cruel stories of youth.
    Justin Chang, San Diego Union-Tribune, 13 June 2019
  • That being said, shamans are currently experiencing a moment in Korean pop culture that recontextualizes mu-dang as hip.
    Kayti Burt, Time, 24 Apr. 2026
  • Plenty of other changes to the game — for instance, the shift in leniency of assist tracking — have irrevocably recontextualized the gravity of a triple-double.
    Julia Poe, Chicago Tribune, 14 Mar. 2026
  • Plenty of old songs of all flavors create minor tidal waves on TikTok, where teen-agers with no prior knowledge of an artist can recontextualize music against the backdrop of a dance challenge or a joke.
    Carrie Battan, The New Yorker, 13 June 2022
  • The episode recontextualizes the Gorn’s terrifying scream.
    Keith Phipps, Vulture, 4 Sep. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'recontextualize.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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