Definition of "recourse"
recourse
noun
countable and uncountable, plural recourses
(uncountable, recourse to) The use of (someone or something) as a source of help in a difficult situation.
Quotations
Tarzan would have liked to subdue the ugly beast without recourse to knife or arrows. So much had his great strength and agility increased in the period following his maturity that he had come to believe that he might master the redoubtable Terkoz in a hand to hand fight were it not for the terrible advantage the anthropoid's huge fighting fangs gave him over the poorly armed Tarzan.
1912 October, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Tarzan of the Apes”, in The All-Story, New York, N.Y.: Frank A. Munsey Co.; republished as “Man’s Reason”, in Tarzan of the Apes, New York, N.Y.: A. L. Burt Company, 1914 June, page 151
Nor were the wool prospects much better. The pastoral industry, which had weathered the severe depression of the early forties by recourse to boiling down the sheep for their tallow, and was now firmly re-established as the staple industry of the colony, was threatened once more with eclipse.
1929, M. Barnard Eldershaw, A House is Built, chapter VIII, section ii
This was done, and in many cases still is done by the main-line railway groups, through the exercise of running powers, which on application to Parliament by the company using them have been granted for the express purpose of affording this access without the necessity for building independent tracks. In other cases, such running powers have been granted without recourse to Parliament, by voluntary agreement between the parties.
1940 May, “The Why and the Wherefore: Running Powers”, in Railway Magazine, page 318
Careful consideration of every aspect, from car-parking facilities, lay-out of circulating areas, heating and lighting, handling of G.P.O. traffic, signposting, litter facilities, train information, waiting rooms and sanitation, to materials and colour should persuade the most pessimistic individual that, given the will, our most out-dated, inadequate and inconvenient railway stations can be transformed without recourse to complete demolition.
1962 March, Brian Haresnape, “Design in 1961—a Retrospect”, in Modern Railways, page 197
(obsolete) A coursing back, or coursing again; renewed course; return; retreat; recurrence.
Quotations
[B]y the ſwift recourſe of fluſhing blood / Right plaine appeard, though ſhe it would diſſemble, / And fayned ſtill her former angry mood, / Thinking to hide the depth by troubling of the flood.
1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto VI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, stanza 29, page 88
For Phyſick is either curative or preventive; Preventive we call that which by purging noxious humors, and the cauſes of diſeases, preventeth ſickneſs in the healthy, or the recourſe thereof in the valetudinary; [...]
1650, Thomas Browne, “Of the Canicular or Dog-daies”, in Pseudodoxia Epidemica: […], 2nd edition, London: […] A[braham] Miller, for Edw[ard] Dod and Nath[aniel] Ekins, […], 4th book, page 195
(obsolete) Access; admittance.
Quotations
[...] Ile giue you a pottle of burn'd ſacke, to giue me recourſe to him, and tell him my name is Broome: onely for a ieſt.
c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merry Wiues of Windsor”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act II, scene i], page 45, column 1
verb
third-person singular simple present recourses, present participle recoursing, simple past and past participle recoursed