recapitulate
Americanverb (used with object)
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to review by a brief summary, as at the end of a speech or discussion; summarize.
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Biology. (of an organism) to repeat (ancestral evolutionary stages) in its development.
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Music. to restate (the exposition) in a sonata-form movement.
verb (used without object)
verb
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to restate the main points of (an argument, speech, etc); summarize
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(tr) (of an animal) to repeat (stages of its evolutionary development) during the embryonic stages of its life
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to repeat at some point during a piece of music (material used earlier in the same work)
Synonym Usage
See repeat.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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recapitulatesimple
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recapitulatessimple
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have recapitulatedperfect
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has recapitulatedperfect
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am recapitulatingprogressive
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are recapitulatingprogressive
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is recapitulatingprogressive
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have been recapitulatingperfect progressive
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has been recapitulatingperfect progressive
Past
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recapitulatedsimple
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had recapitulatedperfect
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was recapitulatingprogressive
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were recapitulatingprogressive
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had been recapitulatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of recapitulate
First recorded in 1560–70; from Late Latin recapitulātus (past participle of recapitulāre ), equivalent to re- re- + capitulātus; see capitulate
Explanation
To recapitulate means to go back and summarize. At the end of an oral report, you might say, "So, to recapitulate, I've made three points," and then you name them. Recapitulate is a long, scary-looking word that actually means something simple and easy. It comes from the Latin re- "again" and capitulum "chapter," which comes from the word caput "head." Think of recapitulating––or recapping, for short––as putting nice little caps on all the bottles you've opened up––tightening everything up.
Vocabulary lists containing recapitulate
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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:
“It would be tedious as well as unwelcome,” Lord Halifax said on another occasion, “to recapitulate all our wrong steps.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 8, 2026
Stopping these toxins could save countless lives and limbs, but laboratory research usually relies on cell-based research, which doesn’t accurately recapitulate what happens in a living animal.
From Science Magazine ● Jun. 5, 2024
So we and many others have worked for decades to make a medicine that could recapitulate that naturally-occurring phenomenon.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 15, 2024
What is important is that gastruloids recapitulate some features of early development even without the external cues from the placenta or yolk sac that typically direct the organization of an early embryo.
From Scientific American ● Nov. 9, 2023
Yet, uncannily, the trajectory of his psyche had begun to recapitulate Jagu’s.
From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Goldberg also recapitulates the stories about Trump's fascination with Adolf Hitler as told to him and the other authors by John Kelly.
From Salon ● Oct. 23, 2024
"Our study is the first comprehensive demonstration of a genetically defined cardiac reflex, which faithfully recapitulates characteristics of human syncope at physiological, behavioral and neural network levels."
From Science Daily ● Nov. 1, 2023
Toni Morrison’s “A Mercy,” in less than 200 pages, effectively recapitulates America’s tortuous racial history.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 22, 2023
After all, her professional trajectory perfectly recapitulates her times.
From Seattle Times ● May 9, 2023
The peculiar feature of his peep-show construction, that the viewer is looking at himself as well as at the painting, simply recapitulates this earlier tension.
From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton
"Our model accurately recapitulated the disease phenotype, offering new insights into the underlying molecular and cellular pathology of cerebral vascular disorders," Guo says.
From Science Daily ● May 20, 2024
In a sense it has been: dozens of recent surveys have recapitulated these findings.
From Scientific American ● Mar. 20, 2023
The infamous climax of that story recapitulated the depraved ambitions of a would-be rubber baron who conscripts Indigenous villagers to drag a ship through a steep jungle denuded for that purpose.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 16, 2022
In his ruling on Andrew’s motion to dismiss the case, the judge recapitulated the allegations in Ms. Giuffre’s lawsuit.
From New York Times ● Jan. 13, 2022
And all the weight, all the weariness of it, had recapitulated itself in his body; he felt the physical burden.
From "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick
"Our concept is recapitulating development: FOXF1 is expressed during development and in healthy tissue, but it decreases with age," Purmessur Walter said.
From Science Daily ● May 16, 2024
Sometimes his playing sounds like a kind of focused preaching; sometimes he’s babbling or scrambling notes at high speed; all the while he’s also resolving and recapitulating.
From New York Times ● Feb. 7, 2024
They recast events the reader already knows something about, lending the novel a sense of perpetual circling and recapitulating.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 5, 2022
“It’s always a question when we’re trying to model disease using rodents: Are we really recapitulating the changes that are observed in humans?”
From Science Magazine ● Oct. 6, 2021
Hume, in distinguishing relations of ideas from matters of fact, is recapitulating the fundamental intellectual conflict which gave rise to the Scientific Revolution.
From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton
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.
