It was recently reported that only half of the culture recovery fund has actually been given to arts organisations, which does not augur well for our entertainment options if the wider economic recovery we all hope for arrives later this year. But what is a “recovery” exactly?

Via the old French recouvrer, it derives ultimately from the Latin recuperare, from which we also directly take our word “recuperate”. A “recovery” could also be a rally of forces in battle, but in early usage you could not simply “recover” from an illness, you had to recover (ie regain) something, such as your health or happiness.

The oldest English sense of “recovery”, though, is legal: it is the regaining of some property or compensation through court action (to “recover damages”, still a current use); a “recovery” itself could be a fine imposed by the court. The long-suffering British public, having just learned that outsourcing outfit Serco’s top two executives were paid £7.4m between them for their hard work in 2020, might wonder whether the hoped for post-pandemic recovery will also include a recovery of some of the vast sums so generously awarded in Covid contracts, if not to troupes of actors and music venues.

• Steven Poole’s A Word for Every Day of the Year is published by Quercus.