Recomputing

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The procedure of recalculating values to incorporate new information or corrections
2. The act of calculating again to update or verify data
3. Redoing a calculation to include changes or refine previous results

Etymology: "Recomputing" is the present participle of "recompute," so it is simply the act of calculating something again. The verb is built from the prefix "re-," meaning "again" or "back," attached to "compute." "Compute" traces back to Latin "computare," formed from "com-," meaning "together," and "putare," meaning "to reckon, count, or think." The original sense was of reckoning things up together, adding them into a total. That counting sense passed into Old French as "computer," and English took it from there, so the word has always carried the idea of arriving at a number through careful reckoning. Adding "re-" yields a plain, literal meaning: to reckon the total a second time, usually because the first result needs checking or because the inputs have changed. The word needs no special story; its parts say exactly what it does.

Synonyms: recalculating, reassessing