All 3 Uses of
recourse
in
Crime and Punishment, by Dostoyevsky
- "Marfa Petrovna is dead, have you heard?" she began having recourse to her leading item of conversation.†
Chpt 4.2 *
- In the opposite case I shall be compelled to have recourse to very serious measures and then...you must blame yourself.†
Chpt 5.3
- Seeing that his accusation of Sonia had completely failed, he had recourse to insolence: "Allow me, gentlemen, allow me!†
Chpt 5.3
Definitions:
-
(1)
(recourse) a different way to accomplish something when the preferred way doesn't work
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
In finance and law, recourse has more specialized meanings. When someone borrows money to purchase a home, the loan can be a nonrecourse loan or not. If the loan is nonrecourse and the borrower does not make payments, the lender can take the property, but they cannot take other money, valuables, or future wages of the borrower. Some states require that home loans be nonrecourse. In many states borrowers can purchase either kind of loan.
More generally in finance and law, recourse may refer to collecting from a second party who has guaranteed that a first party will pay something. For example, if parents guaranteed a loan made by a bank to their children, then the bank would have recourse to demand payment from the parents if the child didn't make payments.