reuptake
verb · noun
Simple meaning
To take up again.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
royptaykSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈɹɔɪpteɪk
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
verb
chiefly biochemistrytransitive
To take up again; to reabsorb.
noun
biochemistry
Specifically, the reabsorption of a neurotransmitter by a neuron after the transmission of a neural impulse across a synapse.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient (estimated)
- Frequency
- Rare
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: To take up again; to reabsorb.
Used this way, reuptake is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in technical or specialist writing contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use reuptake
- “Psychopharmacologists discovered that amine reuptake is a process that inactivates monoamine neurotransmitters.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Specifically
Other combinations
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
An antidepressant drug that acts by blocking the reuptake of serotonin so that more serotonin is available to act on receptors in the brain.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.