resuspend

To resuspend means to place something back into a state of suspension. This word is most often used in laboratory settings. When a solid substance settles out of a liquid and forms sediment, a scientist may resuspend the particles by shaking, stirring, or pipetting until they are spread through the liquid again. It describes moving something from a settled state back into a dispersed or floating state within a fluid.

Outside the lab, the word keeps its literal parts: re- means "again," and suspend means "to stop for a time" or sometimes "to hang." So resuspend can also mean to suspend something again after it had been allowed to continue or be used. For example, if a judge temporarily halts a trial, allows it to continue, but then faces a new legal problem, the court might resuspend the proceedings. In the same way, if a driver's license was reinstated but the driver commits another offense, the authorities may resuspend the license. The word is sometimes confused with resume, but they mean different things: resume means to start again, while resuspend means to put on hold again or, in science, to mix settled material back into a liquid.