Playing with words.

Reading Natural Curiosity by Margaret Dabble in bed this morning, (reading like this is a luxury still appreciated every day of the week, after years of jumping out of bed to go to work) her heroine mentioned she had recovered love.

Recovered, recovered. The word bounced around my head and I kept going back to the sentence rather than reading on.

Recovered meant to find again as Dabble had used it. You get something back. If you recover from an illness you find your health again. I recover my keys from wherever I have tossed them. I have often thought finding keys should be an Olympic sport.

But if you recover a couch with new fabric you hide it where you can’t see it. If you open a box to reveal its contents, but when you recover it, the contents are hidden an opposite meaning.

I went to www.etymonline.com to find the history of the word.

C.1300, "to regain consciousness," from Anglo-Fr. rekeverer (1292), O.Fr. recovrer, from L. recuperare "to recover" (see recuperate). Meaning "to regain health or strength" is from c.1330; sense of "to get (anything) back" is first attested 1366. Recovery is c.1302, in Anglo-Fr., both of health and of legal possession.

Nothing about the second meaning. I looked at my click-clack (French for convertible couch because when you change it from a couch to a bed it first goes click than clack as you lift the seat up and down). The blue cover is in perfect condition so there is no need to recover it. When I do maybe I should use the word reupholster and when I put the lid on a box for a second time, I can close it rather than recover it.

As for my constantly missing keys, I hope to recover those as regularly as I lose them.