Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Figuratively, a return; a re-appearance: as “The Recrudescence of Imray,” the original title of a story by Rudyard Kipling in “Mine Own People.”
  • noun The state of being recrudescent, or becoming raw or exacerbated again.
  • noun Hence A reopening; renewal; a coming into existence anew; a fresh outbreak.
  • noun In medicine, increased activity of a disease or morbid process after partial recovery.
  • noun In botany, the production of a fresh shoot from the top of a ripened spike.

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

  • noun The state or condition of being recrudescent.
  • noun (Med.) Increased severity of a disease after temporary remission.

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

  • noun The state or condition of being recrudescent.
  • noun medicine the acute recurrence of a disease, or its symptoms, after a period of improvement

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

  • noun a return of something after a period of abatement

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin recrudescere.

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Examples

  • In Patterns of American Jurisprudence, Neil Duxbury wrote, "By the late 1930s, Roscoe Pound, once keen for the expansion of administrative powers, was rallying against what he termed the recrudescence of administrative absolutism."

    Roscoe Pound and the Administrative State Dan Ernst 2008

  • In Patterns of American Jurisprudence, Neil Duxbury wrote, "By the late 1930s, Roscoe Pound, once keen for the expansion of administrative powers, was rallying against what he termed the recrudescence of administrative absolutism."

    Archive 2008-09-01 Mary L. Dudziak 2008

  • Patterns of American Jurisprudence, Neil Duxbury wrote, "By the late 1930s, Roscoe Pound, once keen for the expansion of administrative powers, was rallying against what he termed the recrudescence of administrative absolutism."

    Legal History Blog 2008

  • Kirschleger [106] describes a tuft of leaves as occurring on the apex of the flowering spike after the maturation of the fruit in _Plantago_, and a similar growth frequently takes place in the common wallflower, in _Antirrhinum majus_, &c. In cases where a renewal of growth in the axis of inflorescence has taken place after the ripening of the fruit, the French botanists use the term recrudescence, but the growth in question by no means always occurs after the ripening of the fruit, but frequently before.

    Vegetable Teratology An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants Maxwell T. Masters

  • In fact, Pound considered what he variously called the recrudescence of “justice without law,” “the rise of personal government,” and the “growth of administrative law” cause for concern not celebration.

    Archive 2008-09-01 Mary L. Dudziak 2008

  • In fact, Pound considered what he variously called the recrudescence of “justice without law,” “the rise of personal government,” and the “growth of administrative law” cause for concern not celebration.

    "Executive Justice is an Evil" Dan Ernst 2008

  • One might think that she actually likes the music, but her brahmin vocabulary gives her away: "recrudescence" generally refers to unpleasant conditions, such as a disease.

    Declining Rock? Porter, Carolyn 1977

  • Rancor over these differences feeds the recrudescence of fratricidal violence across the centuries.

    Bloodlust Russell Jacoby 2011

  • But scarcely had I dropped into slumber when I was aroused by the recrudescence of my hives.

    CHAPTER X 2010

  • Now stumbling and halting, and again in feverish haste, as the recrudescence of forgotten words was fast or slow, she moved about the cabin, naming article after article.

    LI-WAN, THE FAIR 2010

Comments

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  • First encountered this word in some column by George Will. Which just figures. (Both the fact that it was a George Will-dispatched vocabulary word, and the fact that I have zero recollection of the article save for said word.)

    January 11, 2008

  • You never seem to hear of crudescence, do you?

    January 11, 2008

  • I see this word a lot in Conrad.

    February 23, 2008

  • "The army feared a recrudescence of influenza among troops; it had good reason to fear one."

    —John M. Barry, The Great Influenza (NY: Penguin Books, 2004), 357

    February 17, 2009