'Recuperate' is Latin for 'take back' — reclaiming what illness or exhaustion has stolen from you.
To recover from illness or exertion; to regain something lost or taken.
From Latin "recuperāre" (to get back, regain, recover), also written "reciperāre" in earlier Latin, a compound likely built on "re-" (back, again) and "capere" (to take, seize), from PIE *keh₂p- (to grasp, seize). The same root *keh₂p- produced an enormous family in Latin: "capere" (to take), "captīvus" (captured, whence "captive"), "capāx" (able to hold much, whence "capacity"), "accipere" (to receive, whence "accept"), "concipere" (to take in, whence "conceive"), "praecipere" (to take beforehand, whence "precept"), and "recipere" (to take back, whence "recipe" and "receipt"). The connection between "recuperāre" and "capere" may have passed through an intermediate form *-cuperāre, though the exact morphological pathway is debated. The word entered
English has three words from the same Latin source meaning roughly 'to get back': 'recuperate' (directly from Latin), 'recover' (via Old French 'recovrer,' from Latin 'recuperāre'), and 'receive' (from 'recipere,' the simpler compound). They are all descendants of 're- + capere' but entered English at different times through different channels.
Words closest in meaning, ranked by similarity