Reoccuring vs. Recurring

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha. This is Shireen calling from Denver.

Shireen.

Hello, Shireen.

I’m excited to be on the show.

Awesome. Well, what’s up?

Well, I was at work with my boss and we were talking about a payment schedule because we’re in finance.

And I used the word reoccurring expenditures and he told me it’s recurring expenditures.

And I claimed that they were synonyms.

And he said, no, in the financial world, people say recurring and not reoccurring.

Reoccurring, and basically I’m a hick by saying reoccurring.

Whoa.

No, I’m kidding.

He didn’t say that.

Oh, wow.

How’s the lawsuit coming?

Sir, are you at work right now?

Yes.

Can we talk to your boss?

Can you order her to get on the phone?

Yep.

Hello.

Hi.

Hello.

How are you?

Who is this?

This is Chris.

Shireen told us to ask for a raise for you.

We think she should get one.

Double, and eight weeks of vacation a year.

Yeah, I don’t know about that.

So your position of reoccurring and recurring is that they’re not synonyms and that recurring is preferable.

That’s correct.

Because?

Well, I come from the financial industry.

I used to work on Wall Street and actually sold a company in the payments business.

And, you know, we met a lot of people from around the country in the payments business.

And some would say recurring and some would say reoccurring.

And the reality is a lot of it, whether they said recurring or reoccurring, depend upon whether they’re from like the southeast or the southwest or not, versus some of the coast.

And I was told by many of the authoritative professionals in the industry that, you know, to a certain degree, it’s a difference between irregardless and regardless.

And recurring was a way that you pronounced a sort of fixed set of payments.

Well, okay.

This is one of those cases where we have two similar words.

They are spelled similarly and used similarly.

And they’re both real words, right?

I don’t think anybody’s arguing that point here, right?

Well, I’m not.

I claim a synonym.

There’s a right or a word.

But you’re calling us instead of marketplace.

I mean, let me break it down for you. Yes, they’re both words. They are not exact synonyms, which is important. Let me just say reoccur generally means to occur again.

Obviously, you would say it usually of discrete actions or incidents, such as, I’m going to take this outside your industry just for a little clarity here. She had reoccurring wins at the roulette table, which means she won more than once. But it doesn’t mean that she had continuing wins at the roulette table. She didn’t go and win every week then. She could. She’s done it more than once, but we don’t know how often it’s lasted or how many times. All right. And recur, R-E-C-U-R means to happen repeatedly, that is to say more than once or continuously.

So recur, we have the idea that is a continuing reoccurrence. So it basically means to keep reoccurring. See what I’m saying there? So I’m right? No, no, I think I’m right. I have a way of bringing mud to a conversation, but let me just… What do you think, Shereen?

Here’s the short version. Here’s the thing. I think if you have monthly rent, that’s a recurring expense, which is what we were talking about. No, but we were also talking about paying some contractors we only pay three times and not every month. And that would be a reoccurring expenditure. Is that correct? Oh, I see.

Let me just say here, when in doubt, you should use recur and not reoccur. Fine, but in this instance. I think the difficulty here is the way that you’re phrasing it. If you paid rent to somebody three times, you could say it was a recurring payment or the payment reoccurred three times. Perfect.

Because if it reoccurred three times, you have discrete instances of it occurring. But if they were of different amounts? It’s about the action in the instance, not the amount, not the frequency, not the space between the frequency. It’s the fact that there was an occasion of more than once, the thing happening more than once.

In any case, like I said, Chris, I think generally what we’re talking about here is you chose recur for whatever reason, but it’s going to be the best solution when you’re in doubt about these two words. Recur is going to work almost every place that recur works. Reoccur is not going to work every place that recur works. Right. Whether you’re in the grammatical world or the financial world, I guess. Right.

So, Shereen, I would basically say listen to your boss and don’t expect a good review. Thank you. Thank you. This is horrible. Don’t expect a good review. Can you write that down and mail me a letter with that? Well, I could actually send you to some management courses because clearly you’re not keeping your people in check. Thank you, Grant.

Oh, man. Well, Shereen, thanks for calling. We appreciate it. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye. Bye. Well, if you want a pay raise, we’re the ones that can help you lose it. Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673, or email us, words@waywordradio.org.