recommend
advise
advocate
counsel
prescribe
suggest
i
recover
reclaim
recoup
regain
These words refer to oral or written assistance given to someone who is trying to decide upon a course of action. Recommend indicates a positive declaration in favor of a particular alternative or set of possibilities: recommending a complete change of occupations that would give his life new meaning; recommending ten books as absolutely necessary to any understanding of the question he had raised. The word can apply equally well to situations in which help has or has not been solicited: recommending a walk before breakfast to everyone he met; asking her to recommend a good tailor. Advocate is the most like recommend of the rest of these words in emphasizing a positive declaration on the part of the person giving assistance; drawn from legal terminology, it is even stronger than recommend in suggesting an ardent espousal of a given course of action: advocating complete abstinence as the only way of combating his alcoholism. In this context, the word can imply a pugnacious tenacity or an unwelcome intrusion: advocating his pet theories on sexual adjustment to people far less disturbed than he. Prescribe compares to advocate and recommend in that a positive statement is made, but it is more specific in relating mainly to a doctor-patient relationship in which the doctor prescribes remedies for an ailment. In this context, the patient has sought the doctor’s assistance and is usually not compelled to abide by what is recommended. This gives it a less ardent, more matter-of-fact tone than advocate, but a more authoritative cast than recommend', prescribing a good dinner and an exciting movie as the best way to cure his gloomy frame of mind.
Advise and suggest are much milder than the foregoing words. They do not necessarily indicate that any one alternative is recommended as a solution to the problem in question. Advise implies an extensive and detailed examination of a person’s situation, however informally, with several possibilities for action opened up simply by getting another vantage point on his difficulties: advising me on what to expect from the college I had chosen to attend. When used as an exact substitute for recommend, it nevertheless adds an implication of politeness or of reluctance to seem overbearing. [May I advise you not to lend him large sums of money?; Would you advise me where I should vacation this summer?] Suggest implies a single, very tentative proposal that is not insisted upon: In advising me, he suggested several possibilities for revision. In some cases, the tentativeness implied by the word may result from a fear of being rejected: suggesting timidly that eating out would be enjoyable for both of them.
Counsel has come to have a specific reference to psychologists or guidance personnel at schools or colleges: counseling students on the importance of matching aptitude to vocation. In other uses, it still implies some quasi-official situation, with a stress on seriousness and formality: contending factions who counseled the president in secret. In ordinary uses, the word is more formal than advise, sometimes excessively so: counseling her daughter on how to behave at the prom. See advice,
INDUCE.
These words refer to getting back something that has been lost. Recover is the most general; it can refer to finding a lost item by chance or accident as easily as by intention and effort: recovering the other overshoe while searching the attic one day for something else; only recovering his position of eminence among his fellow scientists in the last days of his life. Retrieve, most concretely, suggests something that has not so much been lost as slipped beyond reach and requires some effort to
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recover : retrieving the floating paddle by leaning out along the bow of the boat.
Recoup is drawn from legal terminology to mean, in ordinary use, a recovering of something similar to or equivalent to a disastrous or negligent loss: recouping his extravagance at the racetrack by embezzling funds from his bank. Like recover, regain stresses getting back the very thing lost, but in contrast it tends to be restricted to a deliberate and laborious search or effort: regaining the hill lost the night before to the enemy; regaining his eyesight after several operations; regaining the heavyweight championship in last week’s fight.
Reclaim and restore both suggest bringing something back to its original condition; reclaim is used largely of land or large areas, restore of buildings or art objects: reclaiming good farmlands from the polluted, man-made swamps; restoring the house to the way it might have looked in the 1820’s. Reclaim may also suggest an interval in which the right to a position or to a property has been transferred or disputed: reclaiming his title to the inheritance after a protracted legal battle. See conserve, repair, save.
Antonyms: mislay.
These words mean to make or to become smaller or less, but they are not in all cases interchangeable. Reduce has a wider range of connotations than the other words and is also the most general. It means to make less in size, amount, number, extent, or intensity: to reduce household expenses; to reduce a labor force during a slack season; to reduce speed on a highway undergoing repairs; to reduce the acreage of a farm by selling off a field. Reduce further means to bring to an inferior rank, position, or financial condition: a widow reduced to renting out rooms to make ends meet; a sergeant reduced to private after a summary courtmartial; a pampered woman reduced to doing her own housework because of a servant shortage. When applied to the losing of weight, especially when deliberate, reduce is popularly used intransitively: My mother and aunts are always trying fad diets in order to reduce.
Abate means to reduce, as in strength or degree, usually from an excessive intensity or amount. In this sense, it is most frequently an intransitive verb. [The anguished screams in the night began to abate when the police arrived; After taking aspirin, she found her pain abating .] In a legal sense, abate is used transitively and means to do away with completely or to make null and void: to abate a nuisance; to abate a writ.
Curtail is to reduce abruptly and radically, as by cutting off or cutting shorter than was originally intended. The word is used chiefly of nonmaterial things and conveys the idea of the unexpected: a vacation curtailed by a hurricane that damaged their cottage; to curtail a pointless argument by turning on one’s heel and leaving the room; to cur ail useless government spending.
Diminish is a more accurate word than reduce when one wishes to stress the idea of removing part of something so that there is a manifest and sometimes progressive lessening, but not to the point of total disappearance. The word may suggest either the loss of something valuable or a lessening of that which is undesirable. [As people approach old age their energy may diminish ; As his confidence in his work increased, his anxieties about it diminished .]
Lower is to make less, especially in value, degree, or level. It is not as emphatic or precise a word as reduce in this sense, although fairly
recover
(continued)
restore
retrieve
reduce
abate
curtail
diminish
lower
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