means A bringing back to life, use, or popularity — whether of a person, a tradition, a fashion, or a religious fervor that had quietly gone dormant.

from From Latin 'revivere,' to live again — 're-' (again) bolted onto 'vivere' (to live), the same root that animates 'vivid,' 'survive,' and 'vivacious.' It arrived in English via the verb 'revive' in the late Middle Ages, with the noun 'revival' following a couple of centuries later. The religious sense — the tent-meeting, soul-saving 'revival' — is a later flowering, especially in 18th- and 19th-century America, where faith was treated as something that could, like a fire, be coaxed back from embers.