Meaning & use
fully recover
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Meanings
verbintransitive
To become completely healthy again after an illness or injury.
Grammar: No object; the person is the subject. Use 'from' before the illness: recover from a cold.
Patterns
- fully recover from something
- fully recover after something
He fully recovered from the flu within two weeks.
Doctors expect her to fully recover after the surgery.
It can take months to fully recover from a serious burn.
verbintransitive
To return completely to a normal or strong state after a problem, such as a bad economy or a lost game.
Grammar: No object; often used about markets, companies, teams or countries.
Patterns
- fully recover from something
- fully recover after something
The airline never fully recovered from the strike.
Share prices fully recovered by the end of the year.
The team fully recovered after losing the first two games.
verbtransitiveformal
To get back all of something that was lost, such as money or property.
Grammar: Takes an object: fully recover the money. The object is the thing you get back.
Patterns
- fully recover something
- fully recover something from someone
The bank hopes to fully recover the unpaid loan.
Investors fully recovered their losses within a year.
Word forms
| third person singular | fully recovers |
|---|---|
| past tense | fully recovered |
| past participle | fully recovered |
| -ing form | fully recovering |
Common combinations
- fully recover from an illness
- She needed a year to fully recover from an illness that left her very weak.
- fully recover your strength
- Eat well and rest so you can fully recover your strength.
- fully recover the cost
- The company did not fully recover the cost of the new equipment.
- never fully recover
- Some patients never fully recover their sense of smell.
Synonyms and how they differ
- heal
- Used about wounds or broken bones closing up, not about a person returning to normal life.
- get better
- Informal and less strong; it can mean only some improvement, while 'fully recover' means complete.
- recuperate
- Formal and usually about resting after illness; it does not stress complete recovery.
Opposites
Word family
- recovery noun
- The process of getting well again or getting something back.
- recoverable adjective
- Able to be got back, as of money or data.
- recovered adjective
- Having become well again, or found and brought back.
Commonly confused: fully recover or recover? fully recover or discover?
fully recover vs recover
'Recover' alone can mean partial improvement; 'fully recover' stresses that the process is complete.
fully recover vs discover
'Discover' means to find something for the first time; 'recover' means to get something back or get well.
Practice
Choose the correct sentence.
Choose one answer.
When you name the illness, the verb takes 'from': recover from an illness. The other prepositions do not fit this pattern, and without a preposition the verb would need a direct object such as 'her strength'.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “fully recover”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.