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

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

1511: "I'll be home in 3 days; don't wash" Might be False Jan 31, 2019

852: delilah Apr 8, 2017

Important Announcement: Blogspot Access Will Close