iterative
Americanadjective
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repeating; making repetition; repetitious.
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relating to or noting a development strategy that involves a cyclical process of refining or tweaking the latest version or iteration of a product, process, or idea to make a subsequent version: The new restaurant finalized their menu after a year of diner feedback and iterative improvements.
Website design is highly iterative.
The new restaurant finalized their menu after a year of diner feedback and iterative improvements.
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Grammar. frequentative.
adjective
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repetitious or frequent
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maths logic another word for recursive See recursive
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grammar another word for frequentative
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of iterative
First recorded in 1450–1500; from Late Latin iterātīvum (verbum) “frequentative (verb).” See iterate, -ive
Explanation
If your boss asks you to be iterative in your sales speech, she means she wants you to repeat the main points many times. An iteration is a repetition, so something that's iterative is a repeated appearance. When you listen to a symphony, the theme that keeps returning is iterative. You might recognize the word best from the more common reiterate, which means to restate. When after lecturing your kid sister on doing the dishes, you restate the rules of the house — wash what you dirty! — that is the iterative part of your lecture. I think she gets it.
Vocabulary lists containing iterative
Engineering - High School
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Shine On, Luz Véliz!
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Printing is iterative, and more complex designs might require several rounds of revisions.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 15, 2026
“There was so much learned on that first film, specifically our iterative process,” Pixar Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter said in a phone call last week from Madrid, shortly before the film’s Spain premiere.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 18, 2026
“We understood the iterative process was going to be really valuable for the reactor system and for hardware and those components. We did not anticipate how powerful it could be on the civil construction side.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 23, 2026
This iterative optimization increases coherence and concentrates energy in the final reconstructed image.
From Science Daily ● Jan. 10, 2026
In large companies, as we saw him at Dockett, he was occasionally insistent, iterative, expressing himself, to use a term of his own, with a "fierceness" corresponding to the strength of his convictions.
From The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Volume 2 by Stephen Lucius Gwynn
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
