Re-use or reuse?
re-use is a noun meaning “Alternative spelling of reuse”; reuse is a noun meaning “The act of salvaging or in some manner restoring a discarded item to yield…”. Wiktionary gives them as spellings of the same word. re-use is written with a hyphen and reuse as one word; they are used differently.
What is the difference between re-use and reuse?
| re-use | reuse | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun, verb | noun, verb |
| Meaning | Alternative spelling of reuse | The act of salvaging or in some manner restoring a discarded item to yield something usable The act of using again, or in another place To use again something that is considered past its usefulness (usually for something else) |
| Example | none recorded | Code reuse can save programmers a lot of typing |
| Forms | re-uses | reuses |
| Pronunciation | not recorded | /ɹiːˈjuːs/ /ɹiːˈjuːz/ |
| In writing | not counted (the list counts single words) | 2.3 times per million words |
Sources: re-use and reuse in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of re-use and reuse
re-use
- 1
Alternative spelling of reuse
- 2
Alternative spelling of reuse
reuse
- 1
The act of salvaging or in some manner restoring a discarded item to yield something usable
- 2
To use again something that is considered past its usefulness (usually for something else)
The students reused empty plastic bottles in their science experiment
- 3
The act of using again, or in another place
Code reuse can save programmers a lot of typing
- 4
To use again, or in another place
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, re-use or reuse?
re-use is a phrase, which the list of single words does not count; reuse 2.3 times per million words.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search re-use vs reuse?
“re-use vs reuse” is searched about 30 times a month on Google and 10 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“reuse vs re-use”, “re-use or reuse”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.