Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Growing raw, sore, or painful again.
  • Coming into existence or renewed vigor again.

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

  • adjective Growing raw, sore, or painful again.
  • adjective Breaking out again after temporary abatement or supression.

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

  • adjective breaking out again or reemerging after temporary abatement or suppression
  • adjective archaic growing raw, sore, or painful again

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective the revival of an unfortunate situation after a period of abatement

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From the Latin recrudescere "to become raw again"; from re- + crudescere "to become hard or raw"

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Examples

  • Before he knew it, with a recrudescent guilty pang, he had tossed the half-smoked cigar away and slackened his pace until his feet dragged in the old lifeless, East Falls manner.

    THE PRODIGAL FATHER 2010

  • Less a musical extravaganza than a pre-emptive wake, the summer "classic rock" festival is clouded by the shadow of the Grim Reaper, marking the triumph of the recrudescent, the cataleptic and James Taylor.

    Rockers Too Far Up the Stairway to Heaven Joe Queenan 2011

  • Because of a recrudescent nativism, we send home thousands upon thousands of foreign students who have gotten masters and doctoral degrees in the hard sciences at American universities.

    The End of American Optimism 2010

  • I mean what will these recrudescent culture warriors do if they cannot refight the 1990's with a boring candidate and her overwrought spouse?

    Obama's Victory Speech: "The Status Quo Is Fighting Back With Everything It's Got" 2009

  • Instead of ending, history looped back on itself, and we are now confronted by a recrudescent and particularly virulent religious ideology straight out of the Middle Ages.

    In a Letter to His Kids, Wired's Founding Editor Recalls the Dawn of the Digital Revolution Louis Rossetto 2008

  • Instead, given the terrain of Pakistan's western borderlands, the strikes are more likely to result in civilian casualties, provoke more public anger, and ultimately fail in suppressing the recrudescent Taliban.

    Pakistan’s Double-Cross 2008

  • Smaller ethnic communities in Kosovo are also at risk, in the face of a recrudescent Albanian nationalism.

    Let's Avoid Another Kosovo Crisis 2008

  • It is increasingly challenged by the recrudescent Taliban and new recruits who have regained control of much of the south.

    Archive 2007-12-01 News from Mad Plato 2007

  • It is increasingly challenged by the recrudescent Taliban and new recruits who have regained control of much of the south.

    FOREIGN POLICY News from Mad Plato 2007

  • For Levinas, Heidegger's philosophy was a thinking of the neuter, a recrudescent paganism that sacralized natural events and anonymous forces.

    Emmanuel Levinas Bergo, Bettina 2007

Comments

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  • Once a lad from the fertile crescent

    had an idea he considered incandescent:

    He treated his chlamydia

    with baths most fastidia,

    But his condition soon proved recrudescent

    December 20, 2007

  • Something bad happens: "Oh crud."

    Time passes.

    Something worse happens: "Oh crud, again."

    January 18, 2008

  • I think this word, which means breaking out again or renewing should be dusted off and brought back into use. Plus, it's just a fun word to say.

    May 16, 2009

  • "They were all-but-forgotten people: the breed that was remembered with a start, or with the unreality of a recrudescent dream." From Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake.

    February 12, 2011