reverse engineer

verb

reverse engineered; reverse engineering; reverse engineers

transitive verb

: to disassemble and examine or analyze in detail (a product or device) to discover the concepts involved in manufacture usually in order to produce something similar
reverse engineering noun

Examples of reverse engineer in a Sentence

They reverse engineered the software.
Recent Examples on the Web
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Everything was built and reverse engineered around that idea of a scene. Stephen Schaefer, Boston Herald, 6 Apr. 2025 It’s estimated that a quantum machine would take 24 hours to be able to reverse engineer a Bitcoin key from the SHA-256 hash with a machine running 13 million qubits – a far cry from Willow’s 105. Nimrod Lehavi, Forbes, 19 Dec. 2024 But market observers quickly reverse engineered the figures, to confusing results. Josephine Rozzelle, CNBC, 3 Apr. 2025 The heavy lifting in Fun-Tuning involved reverse engineering the training loss. ArsTechnica, 28 Mar. 2025 See All Example Sentences for reverse engineer

Word History

First Known Use

1973, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of reverse engineer was in 1973

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Cite this Entry

“Reverse engineer.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/reverse%20engineer. Accessed 21 Apr. 2025.

Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
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