Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A falling back; relapse; return to an abandoned course; backsliding.
  • noun Specifically, in criminol., the relapse of a criminal into crime.

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

  • noun A falling back; a backsliding.

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

  • noun Relapse of a disease or a symptom.

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • I might object, that little or nothing is preached or spoken by him and his companions at the revolution of those festivities against the superstitious keeping of them; but though they should speak as much as can be against this superstition, their lancing being in word only, and not in deed, the recidivation will prove worse than the disease.

    The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) George Gillespie 1630

  • It is not this day feared, but felt, that the rotten dregs of Popery, which were never purged away from England and Ireland and having once been spued out with detestation, are licked up again in Scotland, prove to be the unhappy occasions of a woeful recidivation.

    The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) George Gillespie 1630

  • With his magnetic sympathy, Van Helmont expressed clearly the doctrine of immunity and the cure of disease by immune sera: "For he who has once recovered from that disease hath not only obtained a pure balsaamical blood, whereby for the future he is rendered free from any recidivation of the same evil, but also infallibly cures the same affection in his neighbour ... and by the mysterious power of Magnetism transplants that balsaam and conserving quality into the blood of another."

    The Evolution of Modern Medicine 1921

  • With his magnetic sympathy, Van Helmont expressed clearly the doctrine of immunity and the cure of disease by immune sera: "For he who has once recovered from that disease hath not only obtained a pure balsaamical blood, whereby for the future he is rendered free from any recidivation of the same evil, but also infallibly cures the same affection in his neighbour ... and by the mysterious power of Magnetism transplants that balsaam and conserving quality into the blood of another."

    The Evolution of Modern Medicine A Series of Lectures Delivered at Yale University on the Silliman Foundation in April, 1913 William Osler 1884

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