Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The act or an instance of turning to or making use of a person or thing for aid or in an effort to achieve something.
  • noun One that is turned to or made use of for aid or security.
  • noun Law The right of a creditor to demand payment from an endorser or guarantor when the primary debtor fails to pay.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To return; recur.
  • To have recourse.
  • noun Resort for help or protection, as when in difficulty or perplexity.
  • noun Resort; customary visitation or communication.
  • noun Access; admittance.
  • noun Return; new attack; recurrence.
  • noun Repeated course; frequent flowing.
  • noun In Scots law, the right of an assignee or disponee under the warrandice of the transaction to recur on the vendor or cedent for relief in case of eviction or of defects inferring warrandice.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb obsolete To return; to recur.
  • intransitive verb obsolete To have recourse; to resort.
  • noun obsolete A coursing back, or coursing again, along the line of a previous coursing; renewed course; return; retreat; recurence.
  • noun Recurrence in difficulty, perplexity, need, or the like; access or application for aid; resort.
  • noun obsolete Access; admittance.
  • noun (Commerce) words sometimes added to the indorsement of a negotiable instrument to protect the indorser from liability to the indorsee and subsequent holders. It is a restricted indorsement.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The act of seeking assistance or advice.
  • verb obsolete To return; to recur.
  • verb obsolete To have recourse; to resort.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun something or someone turned to for assistance or security
  • noun act of turning to for assistance

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English recours, from Old French, from Latin recursus, a running back, from past participle of recurrere, to run back : re-, re- + currere, to run; see kers- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French recours < Latin recursus, past participle of recurrō.

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Examples

Comments

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  • Before I discovered this awesome website my best recourse was Wikipedia.

    May 4, 2012

  • " In the light of such new frameworks that are no more dependent on recourse to a numinous entity in order to sustain worldviews and moral imperatives, Iqbāl was left with little choice to critically engage with its foundations, as long as he wanted to sustain his conviction in the absolute inevitability of a religious grounding of all human pursuit."

    Source: “I Pine for True Closeness”: Muḥammad Iqbāl’s Uneasy Relationship with Christianity, and the Islamic Social Ideal

    January 22, 2018