récupérer

French

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin recuperāre. Doublet of recouvrer, which was inherited.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ʁe.ky.pe.ʁe/

• audio

  (file)

Verb

récupérer

1. to get back, to recover, to recuperate
2. to reform, to rehabilitate
3. to reclaim, to recover
4. to make up (e.g. time)
5. to co-opt, to appropriate, to recast to serve one's own ends

   Le premier ministre a tenté de récupérer la crise, mais l’opposition a rétorqué que celle-ci s’était produite sous sa gouverne.

   The premier tried to co-opt the crisis, but the opposition retorted that it had occurred on his watch.

Conjugation

This verb is conjugated like céder. It is a regular -er verb, except that its last stem vowel alternates between /e/ (written 'é') and /ɛ/ (written 'è'), with the latter being used before mute 'e'. One special case is the future stem, used in the future and the conditional. Before 1990, the future stem of such verbs was written récupérer-, reflecting the historic pronunciation /e/. In 1990, the French Academy recommended that it be written récupèrer-, reflecting the now common pronunciation /ɛ/, thereby making this distinction consistent throughout the conjugation (and also matching in this regard the conjugations of verbs like lever and jeter). Both spellings are in use today, and both are therefore given here.

Derived terms

• récupérable

Related terms

• récupération

Descendants

• → English: recoup
• → Romanian: recupera

Further reading

• “récupérer”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé , 2012.