recourse

What it means

1. countableuncountableThe act of seeking assistance or advice.

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

   1669 June (first performance), John Dryden, Tyrannick Love, or, The Royal Martyr. […], London: […] H[enry] Herringman, […], published 1670, →OCLC, Act IV, scene i, page 29

   1 more example

   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

   1678, Nathaniel Wanley, The Wonders of the Little World

2. uncountablerecourse toUse (of someone or something) as a source of help in a difficult situation.

   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

   3 more examples

   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., →OCLC; republished as “Man’s Reason”, in Tarzan of the Apes, New York, N.Y.: A[lbert] L[evi] Burt Company, June 1914, →OCLC, page 151

   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

3. countableobsoleteuncountableA 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.

   1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto VI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 29, page 88

   1 more example

   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, […], →OCLC, 4th book, page 195

In a sentence

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

1678, Nathaniel Wanley, The Wonders of the Little World

Where it comes from

1. Latinrecursus
2. Old Frenchrecours
3. Middle Englishrecours
4. Englishrecourse

From Middle English recours (noun) and recoursen (verb), from Old French recours, from Latin recursus, past participle of recurrō.