As I’m sitting here blurry-eyed and sore-throated (sure, that’s a word) after my trip to the ACFW Conference, I seriously considered skipping my Word of the Week post and doing a recap of the conference.
Then, of course, my brain went, “Recap…hmm. I don’t think I’ve ever looked that up…” So I did.
Recap is a shortened form of recapitulate, dating from 1920. Recapitulate, in turn, is a back-formation of recapitulation from 1560. So, of course, I have to look up recapitulation. It comes from Old French and arrived in English in the 14th century so is o-l-d OLD! It has a very literal meaning of “go over the main points of a thing again; restate by heads or chapters.”
Then of course I had to wonder at why capitulation and recapitulation have rather different meanings, despite just adding that “re.” It’s because capitulation originally meant “an agreement.” As in, one drawn up in heads or chapters. It wasn’t until the mid-17th century that the meaning narrowed to “terms of surrender.”
As for my recap…I’ll do that my other blogging days this week. 😉 When, hopefully, my throat is no longer sore and my eyes no longer blurry. 😉
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.