I am not posting this as a joke...I am very serious. I have recently come across the word 'recapitulate' used in conjunction with a lecture and its indication was the lecturer was reiterating or repeating what had been said and done previously.

I am confused. If 'capitulate' means "To surrender under specified conditions; come to terms.", why then does 'recapitulate' mean "To repeat in concise form" and not "To resurrender under specified conditions; come to terms again."?

Hendry the elder

If you look up etymology of "capitulate" I comes from a word that at first had nothing to do with "surrender". So "recapitulate" means to go back over the important points.
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LL capitulatus, pp. of capitulare, to draw up in heads or chapters, arrange conditions < capitulum: see CAPITULAR6
1 to give up (to an enemy) on prearranged conditions; surrender conditionally
2 to give up; stop resisting
—SYN YIELD

Good question.

The English word came from a Latin word meaning to draw up in chapters, hence, the terms or specified conditions. Recapitulate would be to sum up in the manner of chapter headings. The words probably started off closer together in meaning and then drifted off each in its own way.

Interesting one, this. I remember wondering the same thing about the two words. Nice one, Stranger!

And, yes, as both Bill and Faldage have stated, capitulare means to draw up chapter headings.

The explanation I found went along the lines of it being used by Roman or later empires' officers to refer to the actual document which contained the heads of agreement for a surrender. Originally the capitulation wasn't the actual surrender, it was the agreement to do so on terms, written or not. But the meaning kept sliding. Although, if you stop to think about it, capitulation is usually used to refer to a "graceful" surrender. Words like "rout", "defeat", "overthrow", etc., are used for the success of the use of main force without negotiation.

Gradually, this usage became the main one.

Recapitulate, on the other hand, underwent no such transformation in meaning. Its meaning remained as "to summarise what went before". I remember an English lecturer once stating that his lesson plan overhead foil, which contained the points he was going to cover, was a "precapitulation"!

Oh my goodness, AHBettsII--I have been wanting to post this very thing, and just hadn't gotten around to it. Welcome aBoard! I've had special reason to think about Recapitulations lately, so the puzzling difference was on my mind. Hey--you precapitulated me!

Thanks for the precap, Jackie!

by the way, don't most folks use recap now, rather than the full word?

yeahbut®

this would be true precapitulation, if Jackie had said:

"I was going to post about this very topic but I gave up before I got ahead with it!"

Now, dag nab it (AVY, where are you???)--you-all keep puttin' words in my fingertips...but you said it better'n I could, anyway!