RECOURSE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does recourse mean? 

• RECOURSE (noun)
  The noun RECOURSE has 2 senses:

1. act of turning to for assistance

2. something or someone turned to for assistance or security

  Familiarity information: RECOURSE used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• RECOURSE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Act of turning to for assistance

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

recourse; refuge; resort

Context example:

an appeal to his uncle was his last resort

Hypernyms ("recourse" is a kind of...):

aid; assist; assistance; help (the activity of contributing to the fulfillment of a need or furtherance of an effort or purpose)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Something or someone turned to for assistance or security

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

recourse; refuge; resort

Context example:

took refuge in lying

Hypernyms ("recourse" is a kind of...):

resource (a source of aid or support that may be drawn upon when needed)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "recourse"):

shadow (refuge from danger or observation)

 Context examples 

To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

There are indications that she has had recourse to an optician at least twice during the last few months.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Since he cannot communicate with her direct, he has recourse to the agony column of a paper.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

If this fail, I shall have recourse to other methods.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

How are your various dresses to be remembered, and the particular state of your complexion, and curl of your hair to be described in all their diversities, without having constant recourse to a journal?

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Then having recourse to her workbasket, in excuse for leaning down her face, and concealing all the exquisite feelings of delight and entertainment which she knew she must be expressing, she added, Well, now tell me every thing; make this intelligible to me.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

The little white attic, which had continued her sleeping-room ever since her first entering the family, proving incompetent to suggest any reply, she had recourse, as soon as she was dressed, to another apartment more spacious and more meet for walking about in and thinking, and of which she had now for some time been almost equally mistress.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Thorpe then said something in the loud, incoherent way to which he had often recourse, about its being a d—thing to be miserly; and that if people who rolled in money could not afford things, he did not know who could, which Catherine did not even endeavour to understand.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)