Steve from San Diego asks whether workplace support documents should describe repeated problems as recurrences or reoccurrences. Recurrence is the safer, far more common choice in corpora and in many dictionaries, although reoccurrence and reoccur do appear in specialized contexts, including medicine, where they may mark a more specific kind of return or repetition. Both words trace back to a Latin root meaning “to run,” also found in words like current and course. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Reoccurrence Is a Word, but Recurrence Is Usually the Better Choice”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Steve Jilka, a colleague from San Diego.
Hi, Steve. Welcome to the program.
Hey, thanks.
Here at work, I’m working in a supportive environment, and we’re dealing with problems all the time, problems that happen frequently or repeatedly.
And my peers have taken to using the term reoccurrences to refer to these problems that happen repeatedly.
And to me, that sounds wrong, and it’s been bothering me for a number of years.
I like to use the term recurrence instead.
And my ear says I’m right, but I’m looking for some more substantive basis for that.
You said you work in support, computer support, something like that?
Okay.
Very good.
Okay, that’s helpful.
And you like recurrence, and they like reoccurrence.
That’s correct.
Because your native ear is telling you that recurrence just sounds better.
Yes, exactly.
Yeah, well, your native ear is right.
I mean, if you look at the corpus of American English, these are like these massive texts all collected together and analyzed.
Yeah.
Recurrence outnumbers reoccurrence just exponentially.
Like 30,001 or something like that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It’s an extraordinary percentage.
Recur and recurrence are almost always your safe choice.
Yes.
Now, that’s not to say that reoccur and reoccurrence aren’t words.
They are.
But they tend to be highly specialized.
You’ll encounter them in medicine where somebody is very specifically trying to say, well, the cancer came back, but we don’t know how many times.
Or it recurred, or the cancer came back, and we know it came back just once.
It reoccurred, right?
But outside of medicine and some very specific professional uses, most people should just use recurrence.
Yeah, I mean, even dictionaries.
There’s some dictionaries where you can’t even find reoccurrence.
Right.
Oh, great.
Yeah.
So they both come from the same root.
It’s the idea of running.
It comes from a Latin root that means running.
We get the word current from that and course, those kinds of things.
The recur is the simpler and the better.
Steve, how are you going to tell them that you’re right?
I may use this broadcast.
Actually, I’m writing a document to support some of our processes, and which word I choose will help.
So I’ll try to institute it that way if I can.
Leading by demonstration rather than by memo is often the better way to do it.
Yeah, exactly.
By demo rather than memo, I think they put it.
Yeah, I think you should send them a recurring email, you know?
Like once a day, send them this email saying, I’m right and you’re wrong.
I don’t recommend that.
No, probably not.
It’d be satisfying, but maybe not so helpful.
Steve, thank you so much for your call.
Well, thank you very much.
That was a big help.
Super.
Okay.
Bye-bye now.
Bye-bye.
Computer support.
Who knew?
Oh, we should have called him.
I’ve got some questions.
I can help you with those.
That’s true.
You’re a geek.
Oh, big one.
And I love it.
I love it too.
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