'Count' and 'recount' (a story) share a root — Latin 'computare,' reckoning things one by one.
To determine the total number of a collection of items; to recite numbers in ascending order; to consider or regard as having importance.
From Middle English 'counten,' borrowed from Anglo-French 'counter, conter,' from Old French 'conter' (to count, tell, relate), from Latin 'computāre' (to sum up, reckon, compute), from 'com-' (together) + 'putāre' (to reckon, think, prune). Latin 'putāre' originally meant 'to prune, to clean, to settle accounts' — the connection being that pruning requires careful assessment and reckoning. The same Latin source produced both 'count' and 'compute,' with 'recount' preserving the dual sense of counting and narrating.
French split the descendants of Latin 'computāre' into two separate words: 'compter' (to count numbers) and 'conter' (to tell a story). English borrowed both senses in a single word: to 'recount' can mean either to count again or to narrate — because counting and storytelling were once the same act of 'telling' items one by one.
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