recapitulation
recapitulation Lexical Profile
recapitulation Game Scores & Validity
• noun
An act or instance of summarizing and restating the main points of a speech, argument, or piece of writing.
"The professor concluded the lecture with a brief recapitulation of the key historical events."
The third major section of a musical movement in sonata form, in which the musical themes introduced in the exposition are restated in the tonic key following the development section.
"In the first movement of the symphony, the recapitulation brings the secondary theme back in the home key of C major."
The largely discredited biological hypothesis that the embryonic development of an individual organism repeats the evolutionary stages of its ancestral species.
"Ernst Haeckel's theory of recapitulation was famously summarized by the phrase 'ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.'"
Word Nuance & Usage
Do not confuse with 'capitulation' (the act of surrendering). Despite looking like a derivative of 'capitulate', 'recapitulation' shares the Latin root 'capitulum' in its rhetorical sense of 'headings' or 'chapters', meaning to go over the main points again.
• Rhymes for recapitulation
Word Origin & Etymology
Borrowed from Late Latin recapitulationem ('a going over the main points of a matter again'), from recapitulare, formed from re- ('again') and capitulum ('chapter, heading'), a diminutive of caput ('head').