Dictionary

revirginate en · VERB

Etymology

From re- + virgin + -ate (verb-forming suffix).

Meanings

1. (transitive) To become a virgin again.
   • Media expose/s that hail virginity as a trend; advice books that characterize it as an asset and a tool; women who "revirginate"; plastic surgeons who reconstruct hymens— virginity in such instances does at least as much to revise, resist, and evade statements about patriarchal power as it does to confirm them. 2002, Differences - Volume 13, Issue 2, page 11:
   • The time it takes for revirgination to occur varies from woman to woman. Some might revirginate in a matter of weeks, while for others it might take months. 2004, Jill Conner Browne, God Save the Sweet Potato Queens, →ISBN, page 158:
   • She told me it really was true that you “use it or lose it,” and that in essence, I had “revirginated,” in terms of being too tight for a penis to make it in comfortably. 2011, Joan Price, Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud About Senior Sex, →ISBN:
2. (intransitive) To restore to virginity; to make into a virgin again.
   • Wow. Do we qualify as virgins or not? No. It takes seven years to be revirginated. 1993, Fanny Howe, Saving History, page 32:
   • In the much-plagiarized A Manifest Detection of the most vile and detestable use of Dice-play [1552] the probable author, Gilbert Walker, recounts this anecdote of an old bawd who attempts to "revirginate" one of her girls to trick a gull who insists upon bedding only virgins: "This Mother Bawd undertook to serve his turn according to his desire, and having at home a well-painted, mannerly harlot, as good a maid as Fletcher's mare, that bare three great foals, went in the morning to the apothecary's for half a pint of sweet water, that commonly is called surfling water, or clinker-device, and on the way homeward turned into a nobleman's house to visit his cook, and old acquaintance of hers. 1988, James T. Henke, Gutter Life and Language in the Early "street" Literature of England, page 57:
   • According to this logic, the pardons Balteira gained on her pilgrimage should have revirginated her, and would have if she had an 'iron box', or a firm dedication to her Christian faith, with which to guard her chastity.” 1997, Denise Keyes Filios, Women Out of Bounds:
   • The sensational London Pall Mall Gazette scandal in the eighteen-nineties brought facts to light which prove that, in civilised England, the mania for defloration led to a veritable cult, and that the demand for virgins could only be satisfied by girls being artificially revirginated three, four, or five times. 1927, Bernhard Adam Bauer, Woman, a Treatise on the Anatomy, Physiology, Psychology and Sexual Life of Woman:
   • You can't really revirginate yourself just by finishing the list. 2002, Phoebe McPhee, The Alphabetical Hookup List R-Z, →ISBN, page 214:
   • While the poor fool didn't get his money back, he was about to marry one of the wayward women he had tried to revirginate. 1997, Melodie Chenevert, What Next Nurse?: The Career Planner for Panic Stricken Nurses, →ISBN:
3. (broadly) To restore to an inexperienced state.
   • It's necessary for Congresspersons to revirginate themselves each election year. 1985, Jacqueline Briskin, Too much too soon, page 369:
   • In his opera, Britten, by telling what we've always heard without listening, revirginates our ears. 2013, Ned Rorem, An Absolute Gift: A New Diary, →ISBN:
4. To restore to a pristine state; to rejuvenate.
   • O sea, a fresh beginning at every moment . . . You, O sea, unwearyingly renewed . . . You who revirginate in every wavelet . . . 2000, Gesualdo Bufalino, Tommaso and the Blind Photographer, page 18:
   • Thus Hera retires to her yearly rejuvenating, revirginating bath. 1981, Sylvia Brinton Perera, Descent to the Goddess: A Way of Initiation for Women, page 55:
   • Get up the paint to revirginate the ship before the ice thrusts growling towards the prow by Malice Point. 1938, The Atlantic Monthly - Volume 162, page 634:
5. To make a fresh start.
   • ...as the moon is renewed monthly, so Alatiel "revirginates" at the end of the story, thus annihilating the experience of long wanderings and countless coitions. 1979, Millicent Joy Marcus, An Allegory of Form:
   • Feelings whose flush never revirginates! 1930, Thomas Sturge Moore, Mystery and Tragedy: Two Dramatic Poems, page 52:
   • The idea of starting over, sometimes called “secondary virginity” or “revirginating,” is catching on with thousands of teens and thousands of families. 2007, Linda Eyre, Richard Eyre, How to Talk to Your Child About Sex, →ISBN:

Forms

Deriveds

revirgination