Word of the Day: exhume

exhume ɛkshˈjum verb

: 1. disinter or dig up dead bodies for reburial or for medical investigation

2. revive, bring back or restore something after a forgotten period

The word exhume has appeared in 10 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on May 14 in the video game review “Hades II’s Eternal Pursuit of a Tantalizing Past” by Yussef Cole:

Hades II takes place a number of years beyond the events of the first game. You play as Melinoë, the youngest child of Hades, born sometime during these intervening years and spirited away as an infant just before the titan Chronos invaded the underworld and imprisoned the rest of her family. Chronos comes across as dismissive and haughty, an apt characterization for the father of time.

… Melinoë, like us, is an orphan of the past. She has been severed from her family, from a life that could have been one of safety and comfort. She begins the game out in the wilds, far from the place she knows to be home. She barely even remembers it, having left at such a young age. Melinoë is trying to make her way back, trying to return to a past she cannot even picture or recall. Her struggle is to exhume that memory; to fall over and over again in the battle to reclaim her home.

Daily Word Challenge

Can you correctly use the word exhume in a sentence?

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If you want a better idea of how exhume can be used in a sentence, read these usage examples on Vocabulary.com. You can also visit this guide to learn how to use IPA symbols to show how different words are pronounced.

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