Word.ws English Dictionary

recovering

recovering is the present participle and gerund of recover.

Meaning of recover

Verb

recover (third-person singular simple present recovers, present participle recovering, simple past and past participle recovered)

  1. (transitive) To get back, to regain (a physical thing; in astronomy and navigation, sight of a thing or a signal).
    • After days of inquiries, he finally recovered his lost wallet.
  2. (transitive) To salvage, to extricate, to rescue (a thing or person).
    • They recovered three of the explorers very much alive, then another, wracked with severe hypothermia, who was taken to hospital.
  3. (transitive) To replenish to, resume (a good state of mind or body).
    • At the top of the hill I asked to stop for a few minutes to recover my strength.
  4. (intransitive) To obtain a positive judgement; to win in a lawsuit.
    • The plaintiff recovered in his suit, being awarded declaratory relief and a clearing of his name.
  5. (transitive) To gain as compensation or reparation, usually by formal legal process.
    • to recover damages in trespass; to recover debt and costs in a legal action or that is owing
    Synonyms:
    recoup
  6. (obsolete, transitive) To reach (a place), arrive at.
    • The forest is not three leagues off; / If we recover that, we're sure enough.c. 1590–1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Two Gentlemen of Verona”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...

See all 16 meanings of recover

Noun

recovering (plural recoverings)

  1. The process or the instance of recovery.
    • Fables have their own time island entertainments or fragments of embodied life refractions light and dark recoverings of race and memory passionate elusive by-blows of a richer being.2004, Donald Smith, A Long Stride Shortens the Road: Poems of Scotland

Forms of recovering

pluralrecoverings

Origin of recovering

From Middle English recoveryng; equivalent to recover + -ing.

Questions about recovering

What does recovering mean?
Recovering means the process or the instance of recovery.
What is recovering the present participle and gerund of?
Recovering is the present participle and gerund of recover.
What part of speech is recovering?
Recovering is a noun.
What is the plural of recovering?
The plural of recovering is recoverings.

Words near recovering in the dictionary

  1. recoverers
  2. recoverest
  3. recovereth
  4. recoveries
  5. recoverin
  6. recovering
  7. recoveringly
  8. recoverings
  9. recoverless
  10. recoveror
  11. recoverors

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: recovering (page history and authors); recover (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: “recovering.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/recovering. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.