MEANING
1. A return to an earlier condition, pattern, or form.
2. The return of property to a previous owner, or the right to receive it later.
Use it for
describing a return to a previous arrangement; distinguishing renewed old patterns from novel change; examining whether a trend moves back toward an earlier levelDistinguishes a return toward an earlier condition from any decline, reversal, or temporary variation. Academic functions: Change / Pattern / Trend, Theory / Conceptual Language.
Words that belong together
- reversion to a previous state
- reversion to earlier practices
- reversion to the mean
On the page
The analysis documents a reversion to earlier administrative practices after the reform lost support.
Reversion to the mean can help explain why an unusually extreme observation is followed by a less extreme one.
The arrangement allowed temporary use of the land before its reversion to the original owner.
The financial discussion distinguishes present rental income from the value of the reversion.
Nearby words
Word forms
- Base
- reversion
Usage notes
Usually singular or uncountable for a return: reversion to a state. Legal property use may be countable: a reversion, reversions; reversion to an owner. Register: formal. Commonness: uncommon (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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