recuperate
verb
Simple meaning
To get back to good health after being sick.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
rihkooperaytSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ɹɪˈkupɚeɪt
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
verb
intransitive
To recover, especially from an illness; to get better from an illness or from exhaustion (or sometimes from a financial loss, etc).
Restore to good health or strength
transitive
To restore (someone or something) to health, strength, or currency; to revive or rehabilitate.
transitive
To recover; to regain.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient (estimated)
- Frequency
- Rare
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: To recover, especially from an illness; to get better from an illness or from exhaustion (or sometimes from a financial loss, etc).
Used this way, recuperate is a specialist word with a clearly unfavourable pull. This is a financial use: it has a settled meaning in accounting and business, where precision matters more than colour.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Clinical and detached
Where it naturally appears
- Finance/economics
- Business/professional
- Medicine/healthcare
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use recuperate
- “Recuperate one's losses.”verb
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.