Recuperable

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Capable of being brought back to a former condition following harm or reduction
2. Capable of regaining a previous state after damage or loss
3. Having the potential to be made whole or improved again after decline

Etymology: "Recuperable" is a simple formation: the verb "recuperate" plus the suffix "-able," meaning "capable of being." "Recuperate" itself comes from the Latin "recuperare," meaning "to get back" or "to recover," built from "re-" (again, back) and a root related to "capere," to take or seize. So the adjective is, quite literally, something that can be taken back. The word reached English through Middle English, where it arrived from Medieval Latin "recuperabilis" and Old French "recuperable." Its earliest English sense stayed close to the Latin: a thing that could be regained or recovered, such as lost property or a lost right. The most useful way to read the word is therefore as a legal and practical idea before it was a medical one. Recoverable losses, debts and damages were the original focus, and the sense of recovering from illness or hardship grew naturally from the same idea of getting back what was lost.

Synonyms: recoverable, restorable, redeemable, reclaimable, retrievable

Antonyms: irrecoverable, irretrievable, unrecoverable, lost, unredeemable