What does "recidivate" mean?

To relapse into a previous pattern of behavior, especially to commit new offenses after having been punished or sanctioned for earlier ones.

What is a synonym for "recidivate"?

Common synonyms include: relapse, backslide, cock, fall, fall again into, fall astern.

Recidivate

verb

verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb

1
To relapse into a previous pattern of behavior, especially to commit new offenses after having been punished or sanctioned for earlier ones. intransitive
2
go back to bad behavior wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

relapse backslide cock fall fall again into fall astern

Etymology

Adapted borrowing of Medieval Latin recidīvātus + -ate (verb-forming suffix), past participle of recidīvō, from Latin recidīvus (“returning, recurring”) + -ō (verb-forming suffix). Compare French récidiver. By surface analysis, recidive + -ate

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.