Today, I discovered something fascinating – the word recap is actually an abbreviation! Its origins can be traced back to 1909 shipping records where it was used as a shortened version of recapitulation. In various fields such as music and biology, recapitulation refers to the repetition of a movement or life process. The term was borrowed into English in the fourteenth century from Old French recapitulacion, which itself was borrowed from Latin recapitulationem in the thirteenth century. The Latin word is a combination of the prefix re- meaning “again” and capitulam meaning “section” or “main part”. Interestingly, capitulam translates to “little head” and is derived from the Latin word caput, meaning “head” (from Proto-Italic kaput, from Proto-Indo-European kaput).
