recapitulation

noun

re·​ca·​pit·​u·​la·​tion ˌrē-kə-ˌpi-chə-ˈlā-shən 

1

: a concise summary

2

: the hypothetical occurrence in an individual organism's development of successive stages resembling the series of ancestral types from which it has descended so that the ontogeny of the individual retraces the phylogeny of its group

3

: the third section of a sonata form

Synonyms

• summary
• outline

Examples of recapitulation in a Sentence

will begin his presentation with a recapitulation of the research done on the disease up to this point

Recent Examples on the Web

In this sense, the salt flats and their salty lakes are at once a living record and an ongoing recapitulation of billions of years of planetary history. —Literary Hub, 3 Oct. 2025

The Word for World Is Forest envisions space exploration as a recapitulation of earlier colonial conflicts. —Robert Rubsam, The Atlantic, 21 June 2025

The dullard cousin of the repetition family is redundancy, that almost onomatopoeic term for needless recapitulation. —Namwali Serpell, The New Yorker, 8 Mar. 2025

What had formed on the narrow little patch of dirt in Albuquerque was a recapitulation of the most basic human instincts at the heart of ordinary everyday life; when faced with uncertainty and danger, people naturally cling together and form communities which become more complex and orderly. —Roger Valdez, Forbes, 5 Dec. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for recapitulation

• acclimatisation
• acclimatization
• acidification
• actualization
• annualization
• autocorrelation
• autoregulation
• beatification
• beneficiation
• biodegradation
• biotransformation
• bureaucratization

Medical Definition

recapitulation

noun

re·​ca·​pit·​u·​la·​tion ˌrē-kə-ˌpich-ə-ˈlā-shən 

: the supposed repetition in the development of the individual of its phylogenetic history see recapitulation theory