See reinvent the wheel in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for reinvent the wheel meaning in English (9.2kB)
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "reinvents the wheel",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "reinventing the wheel",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "reinvented the wheel",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "reinvented the wheel",
"tags": [
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "*"
},
"expansion": "reinvent the wheel (third-person singular simple present reinvents the wheel, present participle reinventing the wheel, simple past and past participle reinvented the wheel)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"hyphenation": [
"re‧in‧vent"
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Mandarin terms with non-redundant manual transliterations",
"parents": [
"Terms with non-redundant manual transliterations",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Serbo-Croatian terms with redundant script codes",
"parents": [
"Terms with redundant script codes",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1987 August 22, Chris Bull, quoting Craig Harris, “CDC Ripped at Minority AIDS Conference”, in Gay Community News, volume 15, number 6, page 1",
"text": "The trading of information so that people need not reinvent the wheel.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1993, Marsha Witten, “Narrative and the Culture of Obedience at the Workplace”, in Dennis K. Mumby, editor, Narrative and Social Control: Critical Perspectives (Sage Annual Reviews of Communications Research; 21), Newbury Park, Calif., London: SAGE Publications, page 108",
"text": "A narrative circulates at Mitchell, Hall about a naive young employee who, in his eagerness to be creative, \"reinvents the wheel,\" devoting so many hours reformulating work that has already been done that he drives himself into a nervous breakdown.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1996, Peter Lake, “Retrospective: Wentworth’s Political World in Revisionist and Post-revisionist Perspective”, in J. F. Merritt, editor, The Political World of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, 1621–1641, 1st paperback edition, Cambridge: University of Cambridge, pages 252–253",
"text": "[…] I do not want to make inflated claims for the methodological or conceptual novelty of a certain school or group of writers. Claims to historiographical significance set in a methodological key too often turn out to be claims to have reinvented the wheel. On the contrary, what follows is intended merely to provide some account of the current state of historiographical play in the interpretative aftermath of what has come to be called revisionism and to use the figure of Wentworth to do so.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2000 August 28, Dave Kearns, “Directory Services: Let’s not reinvent the wheel”, in Network World, volume 17, number 35, Southborough, Mass.: Network World, Inc., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 22",
"text": "Evidently, the trend in security applications is to reinvent the wheel, or in this case, to reinvent the directory service.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2012, Gerhard J[ohannes] Plenert, “How Can Lean Help IT?”, in Lean Management Principles for Information Technology (Series on Resource Management), Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press, table 5.4 (The 7 Wastes in IT), page 129",
"text": "Overprocessing. The big problem in this area is a lack of standardization. A lot of time is spent reinventing the wheel. There are a lot of similar activities, and the lead time (set-up time) for reinventing the process should be eliminated.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2017 January 20, Annie Zaleski, “AFI Sounds Refreshed and Rejuvenated on Its 10th Album, AFI (The Blood Album)”, in The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 2017-09-10",
"text": "But although AFI (The Blood Album) doesn't reinvent the wheel, it doesn’t need to: The record illustrates that the members of AFI are deeply committed to forward motion, and remain as fired up now as they were 25 years ago.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To do work unnecessarily when it has already been done satisfactorily by others; to attempt to devise a solution to a problem when a solution already exists."
],
"id": "en-reinvent_the_wheel-en-verb-jy6H-gF4",
"links": [
[
"work",
"work#Noun"
],
[
"unnecessarily",
"unnecessarily"
],
[
"satisfactorily",
"satisfactory"
],
[
"devise",
"devise"
],
[
"solution",
"solution"
],
[
"problem",
"problem"
],
[
"exist",
"exist"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) To do work unnecessarily when it has already been done satisfactorily by others; to attempt to devise a solution to a problem when a solution already exists."
],
"related": [
{
"word": "carry coals to Newcastle"
},
{
"word": "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"
},
{
"word": "never change a running system"
}
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "做無用功"
},
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"roman": "zuò wúyònggōng",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "做无用功"
},
{
"code": "cs",
"lang": "Czech",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "objevit Ameriku"
},
{
"code": "da",
"english": "literally: invent the deep [soup] bowl",
"lang": "Danish",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "opfinde den dybe tallerken"
},
{
"code": "nl",
"lang": "Dutch",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "het wiel opnieuw uitvinden"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "keksiä pyörä uudelleen"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "réinventer la roue"
},
{
"code": "gl",
"lang": "Galician",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "reinventar a roda"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "das Rad neu erfinden"
},
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "feltalálja a spanyolviaszt"
},
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "feltalálja a meleg vizet"
},
{
"code": "it",
"english": "literally: to discover hot water",
"lang": "Italian",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "scoprire l'acqua calda"
},
{
"alt": "しゃりんのさいはつめい",
"code": "ja",
"lang": "Japanese",
"roman": "sharin-no saihatsumei",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "車輪の再発明"
},
{
"code": "lt",
"lang": "Lithuanian",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "išradinėti dviratį"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"tags": [
"imperfective"
],
"word": "wynajdywać koło na nowo"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"tags": [
"perfective"
],
"word": "na nowo odkryć koło"
},
{
"code": "pt",
"lang": "Portuguese",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "reinventar a roda"
},
{
"code": "ro",
"lang": "Romanian",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "reinventa roata"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "izobretátʹ velosipéd",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "изобрета́ть велосипе́д"
},
{
"code": "sh",
"lang": "Serbo-Croatian",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"tags": [
"Cyrillic",
"perfective"
],
"word": "о̀ткрити то̏плӯ во̀ду"
},
{
"code": "sh",
"lang": "Serbo-Croatian",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"tags": [
"Cyrillic",
"imperfective"
],
"word": "откри́вати то̏плӯ во̀ду"
},
{
"code": "sh",
"lang": "Serbo-Croatian",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"tags": [
"Cyrillic",
"perfective"
],
"word": "ѝзмислити то̏плӯ во̀ду"
},
{
"code": "sh",
"lang": "Serbo-Croatian",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"tags": [
"Cyrillic",
"imperfective"
],
"word": "изми́шљати то̏плӯ во̀ду"
},
{
"code": "sh",
"lang": "Serbo-Croatian",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"tags": [
"Roman",
"perfective"
],
"word": "òtkriti tȍplū vòdu"
},
{
"code": "sh",
"lang": "Serbo-Croatian",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"tags": [
"Roman",
"imperfective"
],
"word": "otkrívati tȍplū vòdu"
},
{
"code": "sh",
"lang": "Serbo-Croatian",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"tags": [
"Roman",
"perfective"
],
"word": "ìzmisliti tȍplū vòdu"
},
{
"code": "sh",
"lang": "Serbo-Croatian",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"tags": [
"Roman",
"imperfective"
],
"word": "izmíšljati tȍplū vòdu"
},
{
"code": "es",
"lang": "Spanish",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "descubrir el agua tibia"
}
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"ipa": "/ˌɹiːɪnˌvɛnt ðə ˈ(h)wiːl/",
"tags": [
"General-American",
"Received-Pronunciation"
]
},
{
"audio": "En-us-reinventthewheel.wav",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/f/f1/En-us-reinventthewheel.wav/En-us-reinventthewheel.wav.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/f/f1/En-us-reinventthewheel.wav/En-us-reinventthewheel.wav.ogg",
"tags": [
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],
"text": "Audio (GA)"
},
{
"audio": "en-au-reinvent the wheel.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/6/67/En-au-reinvent_the_wheel.ogg/En-au-reinvent_the_wheel.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/En-au-reinvent_the_wheel.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"word": "reinvent the wheel"
}
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "reinvents the wheel",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "reinventing the wheel",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "reinvented the wheel",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "reinvented the wheel",
"tags": [
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "*"
},
"expansion": "reinvent the wheel (third-person singular simple present reinvents the wheel, present participle reinventing the wheel, simple past and past participle reinvented the wheel)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"hyphenation": [
"re‧in‧vent"
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"related": [
{
"word": "carry coals to Newcastle"
},
{
"word": "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"
},
{
"word": "never change a running system"
}
],
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English idioms",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English terms with IPA pronunciation",
"English terms with audio links",
"English terms with quotations",
"English verbs",
"Mandarin terms with non-redundant manual transliterations",
"Serbo-Croatian terms with redundant script codes"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1987 August 22, Chris Bull, quoting Craig Harris, “CDC Ripped at Minority AIDS Conference”, in Gay Community News, volume 15, number 6, page 1",
"text": "The trading of information so that people need not reinvent the wheel.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1993, Marsha Witten, “Narrative and the Culture of Obedience at the Workplace”, in Dennis K. Mumby, editor, Narrative and Social Control: Critical Perspectives (Sage Annual Reviews of Communications Research; 21), Newbury Park, Calif., London: SAGE Publications, page 108",
"text": "A narrative circulates at Mitchell, Hall about a naive young employee who, in his eagerness to be creative, \"reinvents the wheel,\" devoting so many hours reformulating work that has already been done that he drives himself into a nervous breakdown.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1996, Peter Lake, “Retrospective: Wentworth’s Political World in Revisionist and Post-revisionist Perspective”, in J. F. Merritt, editor, The Political World of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, 1621–1641, 1st paperback edition, Cambridge: University of Cambridge, pages 252–253",
"text": "[…] I do not want to make inflated claims for the methodological or conceptual novelty of a certain school or group of writers. Claims to historiographical significance set in a methodological key too often turn out to be claims to have reinvented the wheel. On the contrary, what follows is intended merely to provide some account of the current state of historiographical play in the interpretative aftermath of what has come to be called revisionism and to use the figure of Wentworth to do so.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2000 August 28, Dave Kearns, “Directory Services: Let’s not reinvent the wheel”, in Network World, volume 17, number 35, Southborough, Mass.: Network World, Inc., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 22",
"text": "Evidently, the trend in security applications is to reinvent the wheel, or in this case, to reinvent the directory service.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2012, Gerhard J[ohannes] Plenert, “How Can Lean Help IT?”, in Lean Management Principles for Information Technology (Series on Resource Management), Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press, table 5.4 (The 7 Wastes in IT), page 129",
"text": "Overprocessing. The big problem in this area is a lack of standardization. A lot of time is spent reinventing the wheel. There are a lot of similar activities, and the lead time (set-up time) for reinventing the process should be eliminated.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2017 January 20, Annie Zaleski, “AFI Sounds Refreshed and Rejuvenated on Its 10th Album, AFI (The Blood Album)”, in The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 2017-09-10",
"text": "But although AFI (The Blood Album) doesn't reinvent the wheel, it doesn’t need to: The record illustrates that the members of AFI are deeply committed to forward motion, and remain as fired up now as they were 25 years ago.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To do work unnecessarily when it has already been done satisfactorily by others; to attempt to devise a solution to a problem when a solution already exists."
],
"links": [
[
"work",
"work#Noun"
],
[
"unnecessarily",
"unnecessarily"
],
[
"satisfactorily",
"satisfactory"
],
[
"devise",
"devise"
],
[
"solution",
"solution"
],
[
"problem",
"problem"
],
[
"exist",
"exist"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) To do work unnecessarily when it has already been done satisfactorily by others; to attempt to devise a solution to a problem when a solution already exists."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"ipa": "/ˌɹiːɪnˌvɛnt ðə ˈ(h)wiːl/",
"tags": [
"General-American",
"Received-Pronunciation"
]
},
{
"audio": "En-us-reinventthewheel.wav",
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"audio": "en-au-reinvent the wheel.ogg",
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"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/En-au-reinvent_the_wheel.ogg",
"tags": [
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],
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}
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "做無用功"
},
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"roman": "zuò wúyònggōng",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "做无用功"
},
{
"code": "cs",
"lang": "Czech",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "objevit Ameriku"
},
{
"code": "da",
"english": "literally: invent the deep [soup] bowl",
"lang": "Danish",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "opfinde den dybe tallerken"
},
{
"code": "nl",
"lang": "Dutch",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "het wiel opnieuw uitvinden"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "keksiä pyörä uudelleen"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "réinventer la roue"
},
{
"code": "gl",
"lang": "Galician",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "reinventar a roda"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "das Rad neu erfinden"
},
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "feltalálja a spanyolviaszt"
},
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "feltalálja a meleg vizet"
},
{
"code": "it",
"english": "literally: to discover hot water",
"lang": "Italian",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "scoprire l'acqua calda"
},
{
"alt": "しゃりんのさいはつめい",
"code": "ja",
"lang": "Japanese",
"roman": "sharin-no saihatsumei",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "車輪の再発明"
},
{
"code": "lt",
"lang": "Lithuanian",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "išradinėti dviratį"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"tags": [
"imperfective"
],
"word": "wynajdywać koło na nowo"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"tags": [
"perfective"
],
"word": "na nowo odkryć koło"
},
{
"code": "pt",
"lang": "Portuguese",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "reinventar a roda"
},
{
"code": "ro",
"lang": "Romanian",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "reinventa roata"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "izobretátʹ velosipéd",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "изобрета́ть велосипе́д"
},
{
"code": "sh",
"lang": "Serbo-Croatian",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"tags": [
"Cyrillic",
"perfective"
],
"word": "о̀ткрити то̏плӯ во̀ду"
},
{
"code": "sh",
"lang": "Serbo-Croatian",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"tags": [
"Cyrillic",
"imperfective"
],
"word": "откри́вати то̏плӯ во̀ду"
},
{
"code": "sh",
"lang": "Serbo-Croatian",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"tags": [
"Cyrillic",
"perfective"
],
"word": "ѝзмислити то̏плӯ во̀ду"
},
{
"code": "sh",
"lang": "Serbo-Croatian",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"tags": [
"Cyrillic",
"imperfective"
],
"word": "изми́шљати то̏плӯ во̀ду"
},
{
"code": "sh",
"lang": "Serbo-Croatian",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"tags": [
"Roman",
"perfective"
],
"word": "òtkriti tȍplū vòdu"
},
{
"code": "sh",
"lang": "Serbo-Croatian",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"tags": [
"Roman",
"imperfective"
],
"word": "otkrívati tȍplū vòdu"
},
{
"code": "sh",
"lang": "Serbo-Croatian",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"tags": [
"Roman",
"perfective"
],
"word": "ìzmisliti tȍplū vòdu"
},
{
"code": "sh",
"lang": "Serbo-Croatian",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"tags": [
"Roman",
"imperfective"
],
"word": "izmíšljati tȍplū vòdu"
},
{
"code": "es",
"lang": "Spanish",
"sense": "do work unnecessarily",
"word": "descubrir el agua tibia"
}
],
"word": "reinvent the wheel"
}
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.