retro-engineer
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.66 in modern English
14
Scrabble Score
13
Letters
3
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To reverse-engineer; to analyze (an existing item) in order to determine how to replicate it.
Transitive verb
Example Sentences
- "On other occasions, where the technical basis for the initial entry cannot be defended, the second mover has the advantage, since it may well be less costly to retro-engineer a product than to have invented and innovated it."
- "I suspected that's why I could so easily retro-engineer and re-invent their ultra-superior and advanced technology."
- "He was an engineer, it was his responsibility to retro-engineer the saucer and its components, to find out how it could do what it had done."
- "You can retro-engineer it. You look at a roomful of junk and you pay attention to what's lying on what, because that will eventually tell you what fell first."
- "It may have been the case that Plato and the Academy were attempting to retro-engineer an ideal government based on existing models of past experiments in political reform."
- "If you can retro-engineer Sauron's ring, it isn't as magical anymore. It's a matter of the characters getting control of the material, as opposed to being in a situation or universe where this is not really possible."