recapitulate

verb

re·​ca·​pit·​u·​late ˌrē-kə-ˈpi-chə-ˌlāt 

recapitulated; recapitulating; recapitulates

transitive verb

1

: to retell or restate briefly : summarize

recapitulate the main points of an argument

He is best when commenting on the words of others; he is worst when attempting to recapitulate the history of sports or boxing.

—Arthur Krystal

To recapitulate the ten presidential elections since 1952 does not in itself advance our understanding of the huge changes taking place in American political behavior.

—Bernard A. Weisberger

2

: to give new form or expression to

With massive, forbidding bulwarks, crenellated parapets, watchtowers buttressing the corners of the walls, his notion of a prison recapitulated the forms of medieval fear and paranoia.

—John Edgar Wideman

3

a

: to repeat the principal stages or phases of (a process, such as a biological process)

This chapter dwells on the recurring theme that carcinogenesis recapitulates embryogenesis …

—Shi-Ming Tu

b

: to reproduce or closely resemble (as in structure or function)

… the animal model should recapitulate if not the entire human disease phenotype, then at least the key attributes under study.

—Thomas A. Milne

The field of tissue engineering aims to recapitulate native tissue function toward replacing damaged or diseased tissues and organs.

—Jennifer K. Lee et al.

intransitive verb

: to make or be able to make a summary : sum up

To recapitulate, at the center of a black hole … there resides a singularity: a region in which time no longer exists …

—Kip S. Thorne

Did you know?

Capitulation originally meant the organizing of material under headings. So recapitulation usually involves the gathering of the main ideas in a brief summary. But a recapitulation may be a complete restatement as well. In many pieces of classical music, the recapitulation, or recap, is the long final section of a movement, where the earlier music is restated in the main key.

Synonyms

• abstract
• boil down
• brief
• digest
• encapsulate
• epitomize
• outline
• recap
• reprise
• sum up
• summarize
• synopsize
• wrap up

Examples of recapitulate in a Sentence

To recapitulate what was said earlier, we need to develop new ways to gain customers.

We understood your point, there's no need to recapitulate.

Recent Examples on the Web

The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us About How and When This Crisis Will End Howe’s book recapitulates his theory that a cyclical pattern underlies Anglo-American history. —Barry Eichengreen, Foreign Affairs, 10 Dec. 2024

That left the scientists behind this new research wondering whether pain from Long Covid could also be recapitulated. —Byjennifer Couzin-Frankel, science.org, 21 June 2024

In serving to both replace and recapitulate a past dog, the business of cloning becomes a kind of scientific magic trick, dealing in the language of cell cultures, cryopreservation, embryo transfers—opaque words for an opaque process. —Alexandra Horowitz, The New Yorker, 24 June 2024

But given that Ukraine has not advanced on the battlefield for over a year, negotiations held now risk, at best, recapitulating the diplomacy behind the ineffective Minsk agreements, which ended the Donbas war of 2014–15 without constraining Russia’s will to control Ukraine. —Liana Fix, Foreign Affairs, 28 Nov. 2023

Word History

Etymology

Late Latin recapitulatus, past participle of recapitulare to restate by heads, sum up, from Latin re- + capitulum division of a book — more at chapter

First Known Use

1556, in the meaning defined at transitive sense 1

Kids Definition

recapitulate

verb

re·​ca·​pit·​u·​late ˌrē-kə-ˈpich-ə-ˌlāt 

recapitulated; recapitulating

: to give a brief summary : summarize

recapitulation

-ˌpich-ə-ˈlā-shən

noun