"Prepared statement needs to be re-prepared" error

As far as I understand prepared statement reprepares are tried three times, and only if things fail three times in a row the ER_NEED_REPREPARE error will actually be passed on to the client. During each reprepare attempt, successful or not, the Com_stmt_reprepare counter should be incremented.

I' having a case now where a java client gets "Prepared statement needs to be re-prepared" exceptions, but

SHOW GLOBAL STATUS LIKE "Com_stmt_%prepare";

| Com_stmt_prepare | 1753 |

| Com_stmt_reprepare | 0 |

Raising the table_definition_cache size originally made the problem go away for a while, but it has returned now.