RECAPITULATE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does recapitulate mean? 

• RECAPITULATE (verb)
  The verb RECAPITULATE has 3 senses:

1. summarize briefly

2. repeat stages of evolutionary development during the embryonic phase of life

3. repeat an earlier theme of a composition

  Familiarity information: RECAPITULATE used as a verb is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• RECAPITULATE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they recapitulate    ... he / she / it recapitulates   
Past simple: recapitulated   
Past participle: recapitulated   
-ing form: recapitulating   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Summarize briefly

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Synonyms:

recap; recapitulate

Context example:

Let's recapitulate the main ideas

Hypernyms (to "recapitulate" is one way to...):

resume; sum up; summarise; summarize (give a summary (of))

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "recapitulate"):

hash over; rehash; retrograde (go back over)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s
Somebody ----s something

Derivation:

recapitulation (a summary at the end that repeats the substance of a longer discussion)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Repeat stages of evolutionary development during the embryonic phase of life

Classified under:

Verbs of sewing, baking, painting, performing

Hypernyms (to "recapitulate" is one way to...):

double; duplicate; reduplicate; repeat; replicate (make or do or perform again)

Sentence frame:

Something ----s something

Derivation:

recapitulation (emergence during embryonic development of various characters or structures that appeared during the evolutionary history of the strain or species)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Repeat an earlier theme of a composition

Classified under:

Verbs of sewing, baking, painting, performing

Synonyms:

recapitulate; repeat; reprise; reprize

Hypernyms (to "recapitulate" is one way to...):

play; spiel (replay (as a melody))

Domain category:

music (musical activity (singing or whistling etc.))

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something

Derivation:

recapitulation ((music) the section of a composition or movement (especially in sonata form) in which musical themes that were introduced earlier are repeated)

 Context examples 

The finding that so much of the development of an embryo can be recapitulated using stem cells will also increase researchers’ ability to study the genetic mechanisms underlying normal development and disease.

(Scientists develop mouse ‘embryo-like structures’ with organisation along body’s major axes, University of Cambridge)

A primitive malignant soft tissue sarcoma that recapitulates the phenotypic and biological features of embryonic skeletal muscle.

(Botryoid-Type Embryonal Rhabdomyosarcoma, NCI Thesaurus)

The scientific attainments of Professor Summerlee are too well known for me to trouble to recapitulate them.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I shall now recapitulate what the police have done in the matter.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

At the risk of telling a twice-told tale, I will recapitulate the facts as they were known to the public at the conclusion of the inquest.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

A malignant mesenchymal tumor of soft tissue composed of neoplastic cells that recapitulate the phenotype of osteoblasts and that synthesize bone.

(Extraskeletal Osteosarcoma, NCI Thesaurus)

A low to intermediate grade malignant tumor that recapitulates notochord.

(Chordoma, NCI Thesaurus)

His majesty, in another audience, was at the pains to recapitulate the sum of all I had spoken; compared the questions he made with the answers I had given; then taking me into his hands, and stroking me gently, delivered himself in these words, which I shall never forget, nor the manner he spoke them in: My little friend Grildrig, you have made a most admirable panegyric upon your country; you have clearly proved, that ignorance, idleness, and vice, are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator; that laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied, by those whose interest and abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

He then shortly recapitulated the facts which have already been recorded.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)