1 (formal) (not used in the progressive tenses) to remember sth:
[VN] She could not recall his name. * [V] If I recall correctly, he lives in Luton. * [V-ing] I can't recall meeting her before. * [Vthat] He recalled that she always came home late on Wednesdays. * [Vwh-] Can you recall exactly what happened? [also VN-ing, Vspeech]
2 (not used in the progressive tenses) to make sb think of sth:
The poem recalls Eliot's 'The Waste Land'.
3 [VN] to order sb to return:
Both countries recalled their ambassadors. * He was recalled to military duty. * They have both been recalled to the Welsh squad (= selected as members of the team after a time when they were not selected).
4 [VN] to ask for sth to be returned, often because there is sth wrong with it:
The company has recalled all the faulty hairdryers.
Part of speech: noun
1 [U] the ability to remember sth that you have learned or sth that has happened in the past:
She has amazing powers of recall. * to have instant recall (= to be able to remember sth immediately) * to have total recall (= to be able to remember all the details of sth)
2 [sing.] an official order or request for sb/sth to return, or for sth to be given back:
Thomas's recall to the Welsh team * Hundreds of machines are still in use in spite of a recall by the manufacturers.
IDIOMS
beyond recall impossible to bring back to the original state; impossible to remember:
The paintings were damaged beyond recall.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for recall is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is recall a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, recall is tagged as verb.
Does recall appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — recall appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
