recrudescence

noun

Etymology: From Late Latin recrūdēscentia, from Latin recrūdēscēns, present participle of recrūdēscere (“to recrudesce”), from recrūdēscō (“(of a wound) to break open again; (of a fight, sedition,...) to break out again, be rekindled”); from re- (“again”) + crūdēscō (“to grow harsh or violent; to become worse”) (from crūdus (“bleeding, bloody, raw”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *krewh₂- (“blood outside the body”)) + -ēscō (suffix forming verbs indicating a becoming of something)). The word is cognate with French recrudescence, Italian recrudescenza, Spanish recrudescencia, recrudecimiento.

1. The condition or state being recrudescent; the condition of something (often undesirable) breaking out again, or re-emerging after temporary abatement or suppression.

   “The population of particular countries, or districts of country, may be given up to less improving pursuits than those of agriculture. A recrudescence of barbarism may condemn it [i.e., land] to chronic poverty and waste.”

   “A blinding sunlight drowned all this at times in a sudden recrudescence of glare.”

2. The acute recurrence of a disease, or its symptoms, after a period of improvement.

   “Very probably however, ſuppoſing Mr. Dwight's Account to be Fact, not more than one Conſtitution in one Million is liable to ſuch repeated and diſtant Recrudeſcences of this Diſeaſe.”

   “In other cases the wound opens of itself, and discharges a peculiar matter. Something similar is known to take place in traumatic tetanus; and although in this affection, as well as in hydrophobia, we cannot explain why the phenomenon of recrudescence does not occur in many fatal examples, yet we ought not therefore to deny that in those cases in which it does appear, the connexion between the recrudescence and the disease is most remarkable.”

3. The production of a fresh shoot from a ripened spike.

   “[Frédéric] Kirschleger describes a tuft of leaves as occurring on the apex of the flowering spike after the maturation of the fruit in Plantago, and a similar growth frequently takes place in the common wallflower, in Antirrhinum majus, &c. In cases where a renewal of growth in the axis of inflorescence has taken place after the ripening of the fruit, the French botanists use the term recrudescence, but the growth in question by no means always occurs after the ripening of the fruit, but frequently before.”

   “A great many of the scapes have furnished examples of "recrudescence," a few flowers having been produced amongst the ripening capsules; but fresh flower-stalks have also continued to shoot up from the root, and at the time I write (Oct. 4) I see there is one very pretty bunch of flowers upon a last year's seedling plant.”