Resumption means starting something again after it has been stopped or paused. When a football game goes into halftime, the resumption of play happens when the teams return to the field for the third quarter. When your school closes for winter break, the resumption of classes occurs on that first Monday back in January.

You might talk about the resumption of train service after a snowstorm, or the resumption of diplomatic talks between two countries that had stopped negotiating.

Notice that resumption implies picking up where you left off, not starting completely over. When you bookmark a page in your novel and return to it later, that's resumption: you continue the story from where you paused, you don't start back at chapter one. A runner who stops to tie her shoe and then continues the race shows resumption, while someone who goes back to the starting line shows a restart.

The word often appears in formal contexts like news reports or official announcements, but the concept is simple: it's what happens when something that stopped starts moving forward again.