Re_sign VS. Resign

What a Difference a Hyphen Makes❕

They’re two words, almost identical except for a hyphen, but that little punctuation mark decides whether re-sign or resign means one thing or the opposite.

‼️Example:

A friend of mine recently was debating his future and had to decide whether to re-sign or resign; he could re-sign his contract and extend his stay or resign his position.

Re-sign and resign are almost homographs: words that are spelled the same but have different meanings. If it weren't for that pesky hyphen, they would be; but then again, if it weren't for that pesky hyphen, it’d be harder to know what meaning we were supposed to glean from the word on sight.

📝Re_sign \ rē-ˈsīn \

Re-sign — with the hyphen means to sign a contract again and it usually also means that you’ve decided to stay in your current job! In re-sign. People re-sign things like employment contracts and leases. Taken literally, it might be assumed to mean that they just place a new signature over or next to the original one, but it actually means that a new document is presented to extend the terms of the previous one and it’s the new document that is signed for the first time. So you’re not really re-signing one document but rather just signing an extension. The “s” is pronounced as an “s,” and you emphasize the first syllable.

‼️Examples:

✏I love my current job, so I happily re-signed for another year.

✏He had to re-sign the cheque as the signature did not tally with that in the records of the bank.

😭Resign \ ri-ˈzīn \

Resign without the hyphen means to quit your job; to give notice that one is vacating a job, the opposite of re-signing a work agreement. The “s” is pronounced like a “z.”

‼️Example:

✏He resign from the government in protest at the policy.

💭The origin of the word💭

This word dates back as far as the 13th century and comes from the Latin resignare, which means “to unseal or cancel.” One typically gives a minimum of two weeks of notice to an employer before actually leaving a job, although some employees give the courtesy of more notice while others give less.

💡An alternate meaning of resign is to “accept that something undesirable is unavoidable.” One can “resign himself” to missing out on a promotion or one can “resign herself to a political loss.” 

‼️Example:

✏My friend, I’m sorry to say, eventually decided not to re-sign, which meant I had to resign myself to the idea that we’d no longer be working together. Fortunately, there’s always social media as a way to keep in touch.

✏She resign herself to a lengthy session.

✏She resigned herself to her fate.