reclamatory

English

Etymology

Equivalent to reclaim (“return land to a suitable condition for use; claim back, repossess; return someone to a proper course of action, reform; cry out in opposition or contradiction”) +‎ -atory. Compare exclamatory, declamatory.

Adjective

reclamatory

1. Reclaiming; pertaining to reclamation:
   1. Pertaining to reclamation or reclaiming of land (that was underwater or unusable).
      • 1900, The British Columbia Reports: Being Reports of Cases Determined in the Supreme and County Courts and in Admiralty, page 293:

        This was a case of artificial reclamatory work done by the individual owners of the land beyond the foreshore, and the judgment of the Chief Justice (Osborne , C.J.) of the Nov. 5. Supreme Court of Southern Nigeria was affirmed, […]

      • 1961, The All England Law Reports Reprint: Being a Selection from the Law Times Reports, 1843-1935:

        […] imperceptible in the sense already described, becomes an addition to C the property of the adjoining land; the former has not this result, and the property of the original foreshore, thus suddenly altered by reclamatory work upon it, remains  […]

      • 1968, Tamil Nadu (India), Legislative Assembly Committee on Estimates, Report:

        The reclamatory works are also going on side by side.

      • 1972, Benjamin Obi Nwabueze, Nigerian Land Law:

        […] and creeks, have become important sources of state ownership of land in Lagos, not so much in themselves, as by reason of reclamatory works which have freed them from the reach of the water and so converted them into dry land.

      • 2007, G. Legman, Rationale of the Dirty Joke: An Analysis of Sexual Humor, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 217:

        Certain Women, of the most obvious castratory and reclamatory type, actually specialize in telling horrible and insulting anti-woman jokes, in the same way that […]

      • 2017, David Craven, Art History as Social Praxis: The Collected Writings of David Craven, BRILL, →ISBN, page 87:

        As to land reclamatory pieces, Smithson said that they involved 'a kind of dialectic between the ecologists and the industrialists'.

   2. Pertaining to reclamation or reclaiming of concepts, words, etc (that were stigmatized, disfavored, etc).
      • 1994, A. J. Hoenselaars, Ton Hoenselaars, Reclamations of Shakespeare, Rodopi, →ISBN, page 7:

        We have tried to honour the reclamatory spirit of these efforts in the title of this collection. Myths of many kinds emerge in the plays and poems. Frequently the same myth appears in different guises. Given the Renaissance context, it may seem ...

      • 2003, Michelene Wandor, Post-war British Drama: Looking Back in Gender, Routledge, →ISBN:

        Not that this is merely dismissive; since 1968 some of the most exciting theatre work and much interesting reclamatory scholarship has come from these two approaches. All-female groups are vital, both as a reaction against male dominance  […]

2. (religion, archaic) Reformative, corrective; (of a conversion) representing a return to orthodox religious faith and behavior.
   • 1921, George Herbert Betts, The New Program of Religious Education, page 81:

     2. Evangelism; efforts to secure reclamatory conversions. 3. Missionary activities; at home and abroad.

   • 1922, The Lutheran Quarterly, page 262:

     With much that the author has to say we could very heartily agree, as, for example, the following, "religious education seeks to save the need for a reclamatory conversion, and in its stead to substitute a gradual and natural spiritual growth  […] "

   • 1932, James Elmer Russell, The Up-to-date Sunday School: Its Organization and Administration, page 20:

     For them conversion is a necessary step in coming to God. They must return to moral sanity and say, "I will arise and go to my Father." While religious education seeks to make reclamatory conversion unnecessary by preventing the estrangement from God, religious educators should always recognize the need of effort to reclaim and then to train those whom the processes of nurture have either hever had a chance to win, or have failed in their effort to win.

   • 1938, Torney Otto Nall, Vital Religion: A Crusading Church Faces Its Third Century:

     But if conversion and religious education both aim at the same kind of spiritual release, wherein do they fundamentally differ? […] If vital growth in spiritual life vacates the need for a reclamatory conversion, we shall certainly not regret it.

3. (grammar, of a question) Asking for repetition (and sometimes expressing doubt or confusion).
   • 1986, Dwight Bolinger, Dwight Le Merton Bolinger, Intonation and Its Parts: Melody in Spoken English, Stanford University Press, →ISBN, page 318:

     For example, a reclamatory question (calling for a repetition) does not sort well with B + A; […]

   • 1998, Daniel Hirst, Albert Di Cristo, Intonation Systems: A Survey of Twenty Languages, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 50:

     The same is true of a question calling for a repetition (a reclamatory question) : (25) Are you OK? - Eh? (What? Am I what?) - Are you OK ? - Oh, sure, fine.

   • 1998, Villy Rouchota, Andreas H. Jucker, Current Issues in Relevance Theory, John Benjamins Publishing, →ISBN, page 183:

     Nevertheless, reclamatory questions do not constitute a counterexample to my proposal, but rather provide evidence to strengthen it. They neatly differ from other repetitive interrogatives in a significant way: they are manifestly used to elicit […]