receive
Definitions
General English
- verb to get something which has been sent
- verb to meet or to welcome a visitor
Accounting
- verb to get something which is given or delivered to you
Computing
- verb to accept data from a communications link
- acronymRX
Information & Library Science
- verb to accept things that are sent or given to you
Media Studies
- verb to pick up electronic signals and convert them into sound or pictures
- verb in interpersonal communication, to pick up signals and interpret them so that the message is understood
Medical
- verb to get something, especially a transplanted organ
Politics
- verb to accept a report officially
Health Economics
- Doctors' shorthand for prescription drug or recommended course of medical treatment.
Origin & History of “receive”
To receive something is etymologically to ‘take it back’. The word comes via Old French receivre from Latin recipere ‘regain’, a compound verb formed from the prefix re- ‘back, again’ and capere ‘take’ (source of English capture). other English descendants of recipere are receipt (14th c.) (which goes back to medieval Latin recepta, a noun use of the verb’s feminine past participle), receptacle (15th c.), reception (14th c.), recipe, and recipient (16th c.).
