Recovery

How to spell recovery

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce recovery

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does recovery mean?

1. nounThe process of returning to a normal state of health, strength, or condition after illness, injury, or difficulty.
2. nounThe act of regaining possession of something lost, taken, or owed, such as data, property, or money.

Recovery in a sentence

• The surgeon said a full recovery would take about six weeks.

• The company paid a specialist for the recovery of files from the crashed drive.

• After the recession, the slow economic recovery frustrated many businesses.

• The lawsuit sought the recovery of the unpaid debt.

Where does recovery come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends ultimately from the Latin recuperare, meaning 'to regain' or 'to get back', which was built on the prefix re- 'back, again' and capere 'to take'. It travelled into English through the Old French recovrer and the Anglo-Norman recoverer during the 1300s, originally carrying the sense of getting back something lost, especially health or property. From there the noun recovery developed to describe the act or process of returning to a normal state after illness, loss, or difficulty. The same Latin root sits inside the more obviously Latinate word 'recuperate', which is essentially a learned cousin of 'recover'. The everyday verb 'cover' shares the deeper Latin family too, which is why the spelling keeps that familiar -cover- block intact in the middle.

How the word is built

• re- (back, again)
• cover (from Latin recuperare/recapere: to regain, take back)
• -y (noun suffix)