'Revert' is Latin for 'turn back' — its earliest English sense was property returning to a former owner.
To return to a previous state, practice, or belief; in law, (of property) to return to the original owner or their heirs.
From Latin 'revertere' (to turn back, to return), composed of 're-' (back, again) and 'vertere' (to turn). The PIE root is *wer- (to turn, to bend), one of the most productive roots in Latin, generating an enormous word family: 'verse,' 'version,' 'divert,' 'convert,' 'invert,' 'subvert,' 'universe' (turned into one), and 'anniversary' (yearly turning). Latin 'vertere' also gives 'vertex' (a turning point, the
In software development, 'revert' has become an everyday verb — 'revert the commit,' 'revert to the previous version.' This technical usage is among the most etymologically precise in modern English: it literally means turning back to an earlier state, exactly what the Latin 'revertere' described two thousand years ago.
Words closest in meaning, ranked by similarity