Wiktionary
alt. To derive or duplicate the design, technical specifications, manufacturing methods, or functionality of an object by studying an existing product, prototype, etc. n. A person whose job is to reverse-engineer products. vb. To derive or duplicate the design, technical specifications, manufacturing methods, or functionality of an object by studying an existing product, prototype, etc.
Usage examples of "reverse-engineer".
One of the government dweebs took out some tools and tried to take the unit apart to see if any internal elements survived to enable someone to guess at reverse-engineering.
Judy again turned to her netpad, this time uploading some of her hottest hack stuff to Bren's computer: reverse-engineered code for the CIA's file server.
You could even get X-rated tapes for the tape machines that were manufactured there—rip-offs of Japanese designs, reverse-engineered and made in their own fraternal socialist factories.
It was a programming technique that had been reverse-engineered from the sort of psychotic mental blocks that otherwise perfectly normal people had been observed invariably to develop when elected to high political office.
A computer reverse-engineers those patterns and tells you what kind of crystal lattice generated them.