recompense

• recompence (obsolete)

• IPA^(key): /ˌɹɛkəmˈpɛns/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛns

From Middle English recompense, borrowed from Old French recompense or Medieval Latin recompensa.

recompense (countable and uncountable, plural recompenses)

1. An equivalent returned for anything given, done, or suffered; compensation; reward; amends; requital.
2. That which compensates for an injury, or other type of harm or damage.

   He offered money as recompense for the damage, but what the injured party wanted was an apology.

   • 1609, William Shakespeare, Sonnet 23:

     O let my books be then the eloquence
     And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,
     Who plead for love and look for recompense
     More than that tongue that more hath more express'd.

• meed
• payback
• recompence
• restitution

• compensate
• recompensate

From Middle English recompensen, borrowed from Old French recompenser, from Late Latin recompensare, from Latin re- (“again”) + compensare (“to balance out”).

recompense (third-person singular simple present recompenses, present participle recompensing, simple past and past participle recompensed)

1. To reward or repay (someone) for something done, given etc.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, IV.ii:

     She in regard thereof him recompenst / With golden words, and goodly countenance, / And such fond fauours sparingly dispenst […]

   • c. 1598–1600 (date written), William Shakespeare, “As You Like It”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iii]:

     He cannot recompense me better.

2. To give compensation for an injury, or other type of harm or damage.

   The judge ordered the defendant to recompense the plaintiff by paying $100.

3. (transitive) To give (something) in return; to pay back; to pay, as something earned or deserved.
   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Romans 12:17:

     Recompense to no man evil for evil.

• recompensate

From recompenser.

recompense oblique singular, f (oblique plural recompenses, nominative singular recompense, nominative plural recompenses)

1. recompense; compensation

• English: recompense

recompense

1. inflection of recompensar:
   1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
   2. third-person singular imperative

recompense

1. inflection of recompensar:
   1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
   2. third-person singular imperative