Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Of or relating to a repeating process whose output at each stage is applied as input in the succeeding stage.
  • adjective Mathematics Of or relating to a sequential formula or function in which the first term or first set of terms is given, but in which subsequent terms are defined in relation to preceding terms.
  • adjective Computers Of or relating to an algorithm or procedure which refers to itself in its definition or calls itself in its execution.
  • adjective Linguistics Relating to or characterized by recursion.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective drawing upon itself, referring back.
  • adjective mathematics, not comparable of an expression, each term of which is determined by applying a formula to preceding terms
  • adjective computing, not comparable of a program or function that calls itself
  • adjective computing theory, not comparable, of a function which can be computed by a theoretical model of a computer, in a finite amount of time
  • adjective computing theory, not comparable, of a set whose characteristic function is recursive (4)

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective of or relating to a recursion

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word recursive.

Examples

  • What makes it recursive is when we shift back to previous steps such as research or editing.

    A Recursive Process « Write Anything 2009

  • When my JSON endpoint returns a list of strings to be displayed in turn maybe the current top 10 blog posts, I call a recursive display function that does the simple task of showing each in turn.

    Site Home MikeOrmond 2011

  • I’m fairly sure of this, but wait, first the eggs come from chickens, but those also came from eggs …. can’t think, stuck in recursive loop ….

    Think Progress » Frist and Hastert Let Vaccine Industry Write Its Own Multi-Billion Dollar Giveaway 2006

  • Through goodwill, I created a long series of what you might call recursive loops of gullibility that brought me an infinite source of investors. 


    Bernie Madoff - A Letter Of Explanation? 2009

  • In the 1980s in my C++ computer class at University, I learned a powerful coding technique called recursive algorithms.

    Thomas Glocer: Recursive Loops -- Davos 2007 2008

  • The XSLT file in this project can help you understand calling recursive templates, and also gives an idea about how to use in-built functions.

    The Code Project Latest Articles Mahendra Kumar Srivastava 2009

  • Also, for each of these you will find a "driver" class in the default package which simply calls the recursive and iterative implementations and then displays the measurements returned by the SimpleMeasurement interface that each such implementation will have to offer.

    Hottest News Articles 2009

  • DestroyMenu is recursive, that is, it will destroy the menu and all its submenus.

    AutoHotkey Community 2009

  • A statistical method called recursive partitioning was then used to divide treatment groups into "high" or "low" exposure and to determine the relationship between length of drug exposure and long-term outcomes.

    Health News from Medical News Today 2008

  • It is sometimes also referred to as the recursive model.

    Planet PHP 2008

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.