Reclaim

How to spell reclaim

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce reclaim

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does reclaim mean?

1. verbTo recover or take back something that was lost, given up, or taken away.

Reclaim in a sentence

• Travellers can reclaim unused baggage at the airport office.

• The council plans to reclaim derelict land for new housing.

Where does reclaim come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin reclamare, which literally meant 'to cry out against' or 'to protest loudly', built from the prefix re- ('back' or 'against') and the verb clamare ('to call out' or 'to shout'). English took it through Old French reclamer in the 1300s, and the same clamare root gives us the family of words that still carry the idea of calling out: 'claim', 'exclaim', 'proclaim', and 'clamour'. The original sense of shouting in protest gradually softened into the idea of calling something back to yourself, and so the modern meaning of recovering or taking back something that was lost or given up developed. A later, more practical sense grew up around land: to reclaim marsh or sea was to call it back into useful service. Because the second syllable simply spells the everyday word 'claim', the word is mostly free of traps once you remember the single 'c' after 're-'.

How the word is built

• re- (back, again)
• claim (from Latin clamare: to call out)