tot up anoto a word often create a whole different word , which may or may not be a nonsensical one . But sometimes — like the greatpossum - vs.-opossumdebate — it ’s a small less straightforward.Recurringvs.reoccurringfalls into the latter class ( though this situation does also involve an extrac ) .
The Oxford English Dictionary ’s definition forreoccuris “ to go on again ; to go back , ” which is n’t helpful at all in any quest to recognize a difference between the two terms — unless you ’re really just seeking permission to apply them as synonyms . In that typeface , go forth with the OED ’s ( and our ) boon .
For anyone interested in delving a moment deeper , however , there ’s definitelymoreto this semantic story . Thoughreoccurringdoes think of something is occurring again , it does n’t of necessity entail that the thing has already happened more than once in the yesteryear — or that it ’ll continue happening in the future .
To put it in another way , the first time yourdogate your preparation , it occurred . The second clock time , it reoccurred . If your click eat your homework roughly once a week , on the other hand , that ’s arecurringissue . It ’s happened multiple times , it ’ll likely bump again , and there ’s some sort of regularity in the pattern of happening . Something doesn’tneedto check all these boxful to be classified asrecurring . peradventure your dog does n’t stick to any sort of schedule when it comes to preclude snacks , or maybe you learned to keep your assignments in a safe home and do n’t anticipate further incidents . But in oecumenical , if something happens ofttimes , repetitively , and/or at even musical interval , you might want to describe it asrecurringrather thanreoccurring .
That said , people have been usingreoccurinterchangeably withrecur(which date stamp back to the early 1500s ) since it first showed up in authorship in the eighteenth century . The OED ’s earliest citation ofreoccurcomes from a 1734 Englishlanguageedition of François Fénelon’sThe Adventures of Telemachus , in which translating program John Ozell note that “ the same objects ofttimes re - come about in this poem . ” In other words , more than twice . So , again , you have our blessing to userecurring and reoccurringas synonyms .
