The act of summarizing or restating the main points of something. The professor's recapitulation of the lecture helped the students understand the key concepts.
In music, the part of a movement, especially in sonata form, in which themes from the exposition are restated. The recapitulation in the symphony brought back the main theme with a new intensity.
A brief restatement or summary of the main points of a discussion or argument. The lawyer's recapitulation of the case was concise and persuasive.
In developmental biology, the reappearance of ancestral characteristics or stages during the growth of an individual organism. For nineteenth-century naturalists, the human embryo seemed to offer a vivid recapitulation of evolutionary history.