Restoration is a polysemic concept in political and social language. Already in post-revolutionary France, the language use oscillated between sober designation of the contemporary epoch and polemical rhetoric in the post-revolutionary political struggles. In their diverging meanings and diachronic shifts, these dimensions of the conceptual history of restoration shaped Tocqueville’s life and work. Tocqueville’s differentiated interpretation took into account the intellectual and political-educative dynamics of the Restoration era, yet his later works were shaped by a growing scepticism that all efforts to restore past conditions were ultimately futile in the face of the advancing transformative power of the democratic revolution.