recapitulate vs sum up

recapitulate and sum up both are verbs.

Word	Noun	Adjective	Verb	Adverb
recapitulate	No	No	Yes	No
sum up	No	No	Yes	No

As verbs, sum up is a hypernym of recapitulate; that is, sum up is a word with a broader meaning than recapitulate:

Other hypernyms of recapitulate include resume, summarise, summarize.

recapitulate (verb)	sum up (verb)
summarize briefly	give a summary (of)
repeat an earlier theme of a composition	determine the sum of
repeat stages of evolutionary development during the embryonic phase of life	be a summary of