reinvent the wheel

Definition

To do work unnecessarily when it has already been done satisfactorily by others; to attempt to devise a solution to a problem when a solution already exists.

Example Sentences

• "The trading of information so that people need not reinvent the wheel."
• "A narrative circulates at Mitchell, Hall about a naive young employee who, in his eagerness to be creative, "reinvents the wheel," devoting so many hours reformulating work that has already been done that he drives himself into a nervous breakdown."
• "[…] I do not want to make inflated claims for the methodological or conceptual novelty of a certain school or group of writers. Claims to historiographical significance set in a methodological key too often turn out to be claims to have reinvented the wheel. On the contrary, what follows is intended merely to provide some account of the current state of historiographical play in the interpretative aftermath of what has come to be called revisionism and to use the figure of Wentworth to do so."