recursive

[ri-kur-siv]

adjective

1. pertaining to or using a rule or procedure that can be applied repeatedly.

2. Mathematics, Computers.,  pertaining to or using the mathematical process of recursion.

   a recursive function; a recursive procedure.

Other Word Forms

• recursively adverb
• recursiveness noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of recursive¹

First recorded in 1935–40; recurs(ion) + -ive

Example Sentences

In this lyrical memoir, Toews explores her writing career with storytelling that is at once propulsive and recursive, using her work as evidence of both her success and her inability to escape her past.

From Los Angeles Times

Fragments get reprised and interwoven; Schmidt constructed the whole thing as a “recursive feedback loop” befitting the sealed setting.

From Los Angeles Times

Hadrons interact recursively with themselves such that they create what physicists call a “hadronic blob,” which in simulations resemble less abstract art and look more like a tangled ball of yarn.

From Scientific American

As psychology researchers at the University of Kent wrote in 2022, an individual's "subscription to conspiracy beliefs is initially inadvertent, accelerates recursively, then becomes difficult to escape."

From Salon

“I just basically chunked up all the files into functions and classes and groups of code, generated summaries of those code chunks and then recursively summarized the file,” Shobrook said.

From New York Times

Related Words

• circular 
• looping 
• recurrent 
• repeated 

When To Use

What does recursive mean?

Something that’s recursive is looped, especially in a way that allows a process to keep repeating.Recursive has very specific meanings in math, computer programming, and linguistics, but in each case it involves some form of repetition, especially when part of a sequence or formula relies on previous parts. Such a process is called recursion.Example: The program is recursive: once it finishes its search function, it automatically begins again at the beginning.