Recuperates

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Regains health or strength after illness or exertion
2. Gradually returns to full physical or mental well-being following a setback
3. Improves in condition or gets better after being sick or tired

Etymology: "Recuperates" is the third-person singular form of "recuperate", so the verb itself is the story. The base verb was borrowed directly from Latin "recuperāre", a variant of "reciperāre", which meant "get again, regain, recover". Its roots lie in "re-", "again", and "capere", "to take", so the original sense was literally taking something back. English took the word straight from Latin rather than through French, which is why it looks so learned on the page. It sits in an unusual pairing. "Recuperate" is a doublet of "recover", meaning the two words descend from the same Latin source but reached English by different routes, so they split into near-synonyms. The Latin ancestry is also why the word keeps its more formal, medical tone. A quirk of pronunciation is worth knowing too. Some speakers drop the "y" sound in the middle of the word, saying it more like "recoperate". That shift may have been influenced by "recoup", a verb meaning to recover a loss, which is semantically close but etymologically unrelated.

Synonyms: recovers, heals, mends, regains, restores

Antonyms: declines, deteriorates, worsens, fails, loses