recourse

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)The act of seeking assistance or advice.

   “Thus dyed this great Peer in the thirty sixth year of his age compleat, and three days over, in a time of great recourse unto him, and dependence upon him”

   “All other means have fail'd to move her heart; / Our laſt recourſe is, therefore, to your Art.”

2. (uncountable)The use of (someone or something) as a source of help in a difficult situation.

   “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.”

   “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.”

   “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.”

   “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.”

3. (countable, obsolete, uncountable)A coursing back, or coursing again; renewed course; return; retreat; recurrence.

   “[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.”

   “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; [...]”

4. (countable, obsolete, uncountable)Access; admittance.

   “[...] 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.”

verb

1. (obsolete)To return; to recur.

   “[…] the flame departing and recoursing thrice ere the wood took strength to be sharper to consume […]”

2. (obsolete)To have recourse; to resort.
3. (obsolete)To recurse (execute a procedure recursively).