as in to summarize
to make into a short statement of the main points (as of a report)
the professor told the students that their papers should not recapitulate the whole plot but should rather discuss in detail one particular incident they thought was interesting
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Recent Examples of recapitulate
Raven’s marvel of a case study recapitulates the dissonance whereby cycles—political, social, structural, ecological—continue, monuments are created and destroyed and momentum is incited and frustrated, all while costs continue to mount.
—
Anne Reeve, Artforum, 1 Oct. 2025
One feature of Spark’s comic genius is her ability to come up with screwball storylines that recapitulate our hapless drift toward final judgment.
—Judith Shulevitz, The Atlantic, 10 Aug. 2025
The themes of this embarrassing episode were recapitulated throughout two more tortuous years of talks.
—Mike Gallagher, Foreign Affairs, 26 July 2023
Because they are seen as a critical step in a grand technological evolution in aviation that will recapitulate the migration, just beginning now, of the automotive industry from combustion engines to electric motors.
—IEEE Spectrum, 1 June 2018
See All Example Sentences for recapitulate
Anne Reeve, Artforum, 1 Oct. 2025
One feature of Spark’s comic genius is her ability to come up with screwball storylines that recapitulate our hapless drift toward final judgment.
—Judith Shulevitz, The Atlantic, 10 Aug. 2025
The themes of this embarrassing episode were recapitulated throughout two more tortuous years of talks.
—Mike Gallagher, Foreign Affairs, 26 July 2023
Because they are seen as a critical step in a grand technological evolution in aviation that will recapitulate the migration, just beginning now, of the automotive industry from combustion engines to electric motors.
—IEEE Spectrum, 1 June 2018
See All Example Sentences for recapitulate
Recent Examples of Synonyms for recapitulate
summarize
Verb
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Some early testers have used Skills to quickly enter prompts to calculate protein macros in a recipe, generate side-by-side comparisons across multiple tabs while shopping, and summarize lengthy documents, Google adds.—
Jibin Joseph,
PC Magazine,
15 Apr. 2026
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Instead of asking students to define terms or summarize a concept when Wikipedia is sitting right there, the advice was to give them higher-level tasks—to evaluate different solutions to a problem or reflect on how that concept has come up in their own lives.—
ArsTechnica,
ArsTechnica,
13 Apr. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Recapitulate.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/recapitulate. Accessed 17 Apr. 2026.
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