recompense
Americanverb (used with object)
verb (used without object)
noun
-
compensation, as for an injury, wrong, etc..
to make recompense for the loss one's carelessness has caused.
- Synonyms:
- satisfaction, indemnification, amends, payment
-
a repayment or requital, as for favors, gifts, etc.
-
a remuneration or reward, as for services, aid, or the like.
verb
-
(tr) to pay or reward for service, work, etc
-
(tr) to compensate for loss, injury, etc
noun
-
compensation for loss, injury, etc
to make recompense
-
reward, remuneration, or repayment
Synonym Usage
See reward.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
-
recompensernoun
-
underrecompenseverb (used with object)
-
recompensableadjective
-
unrecompensableadjective
-
unrecompensedadjective
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
recompensesimple
-
recompensessimple
-
have recompensedperfect
-
has recompensedperfect
-
am recompensingprogressive
-
are recompensingprogressive
-
is recompensingprogressive
-
have been recompensingperfect progressive
-
has been recompensingperfect progressive
Past
-
recompensedsimple
-
had recompensedperfect
-
was recompensingprogressive
-
were recompensingprogressive
-
had been recompensingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of recompense
1375–1425; (v.) late Middle English < Middle French recompenser < Late Latin recompēnsāre, equivalent to Latin re- re- + compēnsāre ( see compensate); (noun) late Middle English < Middle French, derivative of recompenser
Explanation
Say you loan a few bucks to a friend who is short on cash, and he wins the lottery. Presumably, he'll be able to recompense you, or pay you back what he owes. If you look closely at recompense, you'll see how similar it is to compensate, which means to make amends for something or to pay. Add the prefix re-, which suggests returning or repeating, and you get the meaning of recompense — paying back or reimbursing financially or otherwise. Recompense is most often used as a verb, but it works as a noun, too. In recompense for throwing peas and screaming, a mother might send a toddler to her room for a time-out.
Vocabulary lists containing recompense
The Tragedy of Macbeth
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A Midsummer Night's Dream
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Oedipus the King
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
And without legal recompense, the only check to this power appears to be other armed men.
From Slate ● Jan. 29, 2026
Grandparents have demanded money as recompense for having spent years caring for a grandson taken in battle.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 5, 2025
His children, Tala and Adnan El Sabbagh, “feel they were robbed of things they treasured and worked hard for with no apparent recompense in sight.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 28, 2025
“But the settlement in his favor,” Mr. Lincenberg added, “represents a measure of recompense for the wrongs done to him by the wrongful prosecution.”
From New York Times ● Jan. 25, 2024
It was probably just peaceful despair and relief at final and complete abnegation, now that Judith was about to immolate the frustration’s vicarious recompense into the living fairy tale.
From "Absalom, Absalom!" by William Faulkner
These works are among the great recompenses that experience offers us.
From The New Yorker ● Sep. 19, 2014
“The Case for Reparations” is deeply focused on economic injuries and recompenses.
From Washington Post
Those who know how to resolve the problem of life remain almost always in Siberia; the abundant and richly-flavoured fruit which they gather there recompenses them amply for what they lose.
From The House of the Dead or Prison Life in Siberia with an introduction by Julius Bramont by Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
It has been, for the most part, a grim, dour striving after neuter standards, neuter models, neuter efficiencies, neuter lives and neuter recompenses.
From Feminism and Sex-Extinction by Kenealy, Arabella
The soil, in many places resembling the black earth or tscherno-semof Russia, recompenses with abundant harvests even the slightest labour of cultivation.
From The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II by Leslie, Alexander, fl. 1879-1882
Kennedy wasn’t extorted off the bench or recompensed for his vacancy.
From Slate ● Jul. 2, 2018
"And it came cheap. Unlike hotels where the proprietors had to be recompensed for their time, the Pavilion was a civic building without any clear purpose."
From BBC ● Jun. 6, 2014
One need not be a political ideologue, he says, to believe that people have quantifiable value and deserve to be recompensed for it.
From New York Times ● May 5, 2013
Jenkins said he believes the creditors were never fully recompensed, although St John Ambulance says its debt was recouped via advertising at the ground.
From The Guardian ● Apr. 8, 2013
When the negotiations were concluded, the gods and Skadi had agreed that she would be recompensed for her father’s death in three ways.
From "Norse Mythology" by Neil Gaiman
Still, Treyzon said that does not deter his suit from examining the platform’s value in recompensing class-action members.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 12, 2019
The IRS seized Nelson’s belongings in 1991 to start recompensing the approximate $32m he owed in taxes at the time.
From The Guardian ● Jul. 15, 2015
While the Dutch were in the Thames, a large number of their merchantmen, however, fell into the hands of the English, amply recompensing the latter for the loss they had sustained.
From How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves Updated to 1900 by Kingston, William Henry Giles
"What! by recompensing kindness with treachery?" she said, glancing at him mournfully.
From Under False Pretences A Novel by Sergeant, Adeline
His good nature and justice did farther appear in his manner of recompensing his domestics, and by his liberality to the poor.
From On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, with Biographical Notices of Them, 2nd edition, with considerable additions by Felton, Samuel
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
