Recapture

How to spell recapture

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce recapture

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does recapture mean?

1. verbTo take or seize something again after it has been lost, escaped, or taken away.
2. nounThe act of taking or seizing something again after losing it.

Recapture in a sentence

• verb

  The troops fought to recapture the bridge they had abandoned.

• noun

  The recapture of the escaped prisoner took less than a day.

• verb

  The photograph helped him recapture the feeling of that summer.

• noun

  Analysts welcomed the firm's recapture of its lost market share.

Where does recapture come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is built from the prefix re-, meaning 'again' or 'back', joined to 'capture', which English took in the late 1500s from the French capture, itself from the Latin captura, meaning 'a seizing' or 'a catch'. The deeper root is the Latin verb capere, 'to take, seize, or hold', a root that quietly supplies a large family of English words including 'captive', 'capable', 'accept', and 'receive'. By the 1600s English speakers had begun fixing re- onto 'capture' to describe taking back something that had been taken away, such as a fortress, a prisoner, or a runaway ship. From that military sense it broadened into everyday use for regaining anything lost: a lead in a race, a mood, or a memory. The spelling stays transparent because both halves survive intact, so the trap is simply remembering that 'capture' carries -ture, not -cher, an echo of the Latin -tura ending.

How the word is built

• re- (again, back)
• capt (from Latin capere: to seize, take)
• -ure (noun/verb suffix)