Recounts

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Tells or narrates a detailed account of an event or experience ; counts votes or ballots again to verify results
2. Relates or describes events in sequence or detail ; performs a second counting of votes to ensure accuracy
3. Gives an account or report of something that happened ; repeats the counting process for election or decision-making results

Etymology: "Recounts" is the third-person singular present form of "recount," so the substance is the verb's history. The word combines the prefix "re-" (again) with "count," and the two parts carry the sense of telling a story again and of counting once more. Its ancestry runs through Old Northern French and Anglo-Norman "recunter," a variant of Old French "reconter," which took the Latin "re-" and the "computare" family of meanings that gave English "count" and "compute." In English, "count" entered the language in the Middle English period through Anglo-Norman "counter," and it originally meant to reckon numbers, or to tell something in order, one piece at a time. That sense of enumerating in sequence is what lies beneath the modern "recount" as a retelling. The story is told step by step, as a tally is kept. Both senses of the word came together over time: telling a story again, and counting votes or items once more. The election meaning, as in a recount of ballots, grows directly out of the basic idea of counting again, so the two uses are closely related rather than separate words.

Synonyms: narrates, relates, tells, recites, reports

Antonyms: conceal, suppress, withhold, ignore, omit