recourse
/ɹɪˈkɔːs/US/ˈɹiːkɔɹs/
recourse noun: the act of seeking assistance or advice.
Noun
recourse (countable and uncountable, plural recourses)
- The act of seeking assistance or advice.
- Thus dyed this great Peer in the thirty sixth year of his age compleat, and three days over, in a time of great recourse unto him, and dependence upon him1678, Nathaniel Wanley, The Wonders of the Little World
- All other means have fail'd to move her heart; / Our laſt recourſe is, therefore, to your Art.1669 June (first performance), John Dryden, Tyrannick Love, or, The Royal Martyr. […], London: […] H[enry] Herringman, […], published 1670, →OCLC, Act IV, scene i, page 29
- The use of (someone or something) as a source of help in a difficult situation.
- Tarzan would have liked to subdue the ugly beast without recourse to knife or arrows. So much had his great strength and agility increased in the period following his maturity that he had come to believe that he might master the redoubtable Terkoz in a hand to hand fight were it not for the...1912 October, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Tarzan of the Apes”, in The All-Story, New York, N.Y.: Frank A. Munsey Co., →OCLC; republished as “Man’s Reason”, in Tarzan of the Apes, New York, N.Y.: A[lbert]...
- Nor were the wool prospects much better. The pastoral industry, which had weathered the severe depression of the early forties by recourse to boiling down the sheep for their tallow, and was now firmly re-established as the staple industry of the colony, was threatened once more with eclipse.1929, M. Barnard Eldershaw, A House is Built, chapter VIII, section ii
- A coursing back, or coursing again; renewed course; return; retreat; recurrence.
- [B]y the ſwift recourſe of fluſhing blood / Right plaine appeard, though ſhe it would diſſemble, / And fayned ſtill her former angry mood, / Thinking to hide the depth by troubling of the flood.1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto VI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 29, page 88
- For Phyſick is either curative or preventive; Preventive we call that which by purging noxious humors, and the cauſes of diſeases, preventeth ſickneſs in the healthy, or the recourſe thereof in the valetudinary; [...]1650, Thomas Browne, “Of the Canicular or Dog-daies”, in Pseudodoxia Epidemica: […], 2nd edition, London: […] A[braham] Miller, for Edw[ard] Dod and Nath[aniel] Ekins, […], →OCLC, 4th book, page 195
- Access; admittance.
- [...] Ile giue you a pottle of burn'd ſacke, to giue me recourſe to him, and tell him my name is Broome: onely for a ieſt.c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merry Wiues of Windsor”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
Verb
recourse (third-person singular simple present recourses, present participle recoursing, simple past and past participle recoursed)
recourse meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam
recourse in Tamil
- தஞ்சமடைதல், புகலடைதல், புகலிடம், போக்கிடம், வழிவகை
recourse in Urdu
- پناہ دینے والا, سہارا
recourse in Bengali
- আশ্রয়, প্রতিকারের উপায়
recourse in Malayalam
- അഭയം, നിവൃത്തി, മടങ്ങിപ്പോകൽ
More languagesFewer languages
- recourse in Kannada
- ಒದಗಿಕೆ, ನೆರವು, ಆಸರೆ, ಆಶ್ರಯ
Examples of recourse in a sentence
- Tarzan would have liked to subdue the ugly beast without recourse to knife or arrows.1912 October, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Tarzan of the Apes”, in The All-Story, New York, N.Y.: Frank A. Munsey Co., →OCLC; republished as...
- In other cases, such running powers have been granted without recourse to Parliament, by voluntary agreement between the parties.1940 May, “The Why and the Wherefore: Running Powers”, in Railway Magazine, page 318:
Synonyms of recourse
Forms of recourse
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | recourses |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | recourses |
| present participle | recoursing |
| past participle | recoursed |
| past | recoursed |
Origin of recourse
From Middle English recours (noun) and recoursen (verb), from Old French recours, from Latin recursus, past participle of recurrō.
Words formed from recourse
Words that rhyme with recourse
Questions about recourse
- What does recourse mean?
- Recourse means the act of seeking assistance or advice.
- What is recourse in Tamil?
- Recourse in Tamil is தஞ்சமடைதல், புகலடைதல், புகலிடம். See Recourse meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use recourse in a sentence?
- Tarzan would have liked to subdue the ugly beast without recourse to knife or arrows.
- What part of speech is recourse?
- Recourse can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce recourse?
- Recourse is pronounced /ɹɪˈkɔːs/ (UK).
- What is the plural of recourse?
- The plural of recourse is recourses.
Words near recourse in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: recourse (page history and authors); recourse (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); recourse (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); recourse (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); recourse (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); recourse (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “recourse.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/recourse. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.