Etymology

Borrowed from LatinCategory:English terms borrowed from Latin#RECURSIONCategory:English terms derived from Latin#RECURSION recursiō (“the act of running back or again, return”), from recurrō (“run back; return”), from re- (“back, again”) + currō (“run”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɹɪˈkɜː(ɹ)ʒən/Category:English 3-syllable words#RECURSIONCategory:English terms with IPA pronunciation#RECURSION

• Audio (General American):

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  Category:English terms with audio pronunciation#RECURSION

• Audio (Southern England):

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  Category:English terms with audio pronunciation#RECURSION
• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)ʒənCategory:Rhymes:English/ɜː(ɹ)ʒən#RECURSIONCategory:Rhymes:English/ɜː(ɹ)ʒən/3 syllables#RECURSION

Noun

recursion (countable and uncountable, plural recursions)Category:English lemmas#RECURSIONCategory:English nouns#RECURSIONCategory:English uncountable nouns#RECURSIONCategory:English countable nouns#RECURSIONCategory:English countable nouns#RECURSIONCategory:English entries with incorrect language header#RECURSIONCategory:Pages with entries#RECURSIONCategory:Pages with 1 entry#RECURSION

1. The act of recurring.
   • 1852, William Hastings Macaulay, chapter XIX, in Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas‎:

     The inhabitants predicate the recursion of these storms by numerous other signs, and are prompt to take every precaution to avoid their effects.

     Category:English terms with quotations#RECURSION

2. (mathematicsCategory:en:Mathematics#RECURSION) The act of defining an object (usually a function) in terms of that object itself.

   n! = n × (n − 1)! (for n > 0) or 1 (for n = 0) defines the factorial function using recursion.

   Category:English terms with usage examples#RECURSION

   • 1988, Andrew Radford, Transformational grammar: a first course, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, page 128:

     However, we have still not achieved our goal of devising a finite set of rules which will generate an infinite set of sentence structures. In order to achieve this goal, we need to allow for the fact that natural languages typically have the property that they allow potentially infinite recursion of particular structures.

     Category:English terms with quotations#RECURSION

3. (programmingCategory:en:Programming#RECURSION) The invocation of a procedure from within itself.

   This function uses recursion to compute factorials.

   Category:English terms with usage examples#RECURSION

   • 2011, Michael T. Goodrich, Roberto Tamassia, David M. Mount, Data Structures and Algorithms in C++, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 144:

     When an algorithm makes two recursive calls, we say that it uses binary recursion.

     Category:English terms with quotations#RECURSION

Further reading

• recursion on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• coinsurer