recapitulation
UK[ˌriːkəˌpɪtʃʊˈleɪʃən]US[ˌriːkəˌpɪtʃəˈleɪʃən]
n
The act of repeating or summarizing the main points of something.
n
(Biology) The occurrence of stages during the development of an individual organism that appear to briefly and incompletely repeat the evolutionary stages of its species.
Morpheme Breakdown
re
capitul
ation
re
again
capitul
head, chapter
ation
noun suffix
Etymology
The word 'recapitulation' is built from Latin components. The core is 'capitulum,' a diminutive of 'caput' (head), which came to mean the heading of a section or a chapter. The prefix 're-' (again) was added to create the Medieval Latin verb 'recapitulare,' meaning "to go through the headings again" or "to summarize." The suffix '-ation' was later appended to form the noun denoting the action or result of this process. Thus, the literal journey from "little head" to "chapter heading" to the modern abstract sense of "summarizing the main points" is a clear logical progression. In biological theory, it metaphorically describes an organism's development seeming to "go through the headings again" of its evolutionary history.
Analysis
Structure: re (again) + capitul (head, chapter) + ation (noun suffix)
re: Latin origin, a prefix meaning "again" or "back."
capitul: Latin origin, from 'capitulum' meaning "little head" or "chapter," serving as the core root.
ation: Latin origin via French, a suffix forming nouns indicating an action or process.
Examples
The professor began the lecture with a brief recapitulation of the previous week's material.
The final chapter provides a useful recapitulation of the book's key arguments.
The embryonic development of vertebrates shows a fascinating, though not literal, recapitulation of ancestral forms.