1853: capitulate and recap(itulate) Jan 11, 2020

The words 'capitulate' and 'recapitulate' are clearly from the same root word, despite the fact that they aren't semantically similar. 'Recapitulate' (sometimes just abbreviated as 'recap') just means 'to summarize', and 'capitulate' means 'to surrender', but both of them come in some way from 'capitulum', Latin for 'head'. 'Capitulate' comes from Medieval Latin while 'recap' is from New Latin, but this is not why they are so different; it is because they both used to have a meaning related to 'chapter', but 'capitulate' eventually took the meaning of "to draw up a chapter...of a surrender treaty".

Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts

Previous
Previous

1854: Rebracketing Jan 12, 2020

Next
Next

1852: High Crimes and Misdemeanor Jan 10, 2020