recover
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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7 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "recover", 7-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "recover" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "recover" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
recover is aEnglishverb. It means: To get back, to regain (a physical thing; in astronomy and navigation, sight of a thing or a signal). Pronounced /ɹɪˈkʌvə/. It ranks #4,401 in English word frequency. Often confused with rover and remove.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | recover |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /ɹɪˈkʌvə/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #4,401 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 9 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for recover is 7 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɹɪˈkʌvə/. Corpus data places it at rank #4,401 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 11 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 10 documented wrong-spelling variants for recover, with forms such as "ercover", "rceover", and "reccover". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 9 confusable-pair relationships, "rover", "remove", "removed", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English recoveren, rekeveren, from Anglo-Norman recoverer and Old French recovrer, from Latin recuperāre, alternative form of reciperāre. Doublet of recuperate. The noun is from Middle English recover, from the verb. Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is recover, spelled R-E-C-O-V-E-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To get back, to regain (a physical thing; in astronomy and navigation, sight of a thing or a signal).
- 2To salvage, to extricate, to rescue (a thing or person).
- 3To replenish to, resume (a good state of mind or body).
- 4To obtain a positive judgement; to win in a lawsuit.
- 5To gain as compensation or reparation, usually by formal legal process.
- 6To reach (a place), arrive at.
- 7To restore to good health, consciousness, life etc.
- 8To make good by reparation; to make up for; to retrieve; to repair the loss or injury of.
- 9To regain one's composure, balance etc.
- 10To get better, to regain health or prosperity.
- 11To recover from.
Etymology
From Middle English recoveren, rekeveren, from Anglo-Norman recoverer and Old French recovrer, from Latin recuperāre, alternative form of reciperāre. Doublet of recuperate. The noun is from Middle English recover, from the verb.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ercover,rceover,reccover,recoevr,recoverr,recovre,recovver,recvoer,reocver,rrecover
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for recover
Misspelling Variants of "recover"
Frequency rank: #4,401 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter R in our English index: