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recursive

adjective

Simple meaning

Related to a series of steps to be carried out or goals to be accomplished.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

reekursiv

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IPA pronunciation (US)

ɹiˈkɝsɪv

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

adjective

  1. Drawing upon itself, referring back.

  2. mathematicsnot comparable

    Of an expression, each term of which is determined by applying a formula to preceding terms

  3. computingnot comparable

    Of a program or function that calls itself

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: Drawing upon itself, referring back.

Used this way, recursive is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
No strong connotation
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

recursive functionrecursive definitionrecursive procedurerecursive callsrecursive algorithmrecursive processrecursive methodrecursive structure

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • recursive definitionnounCompound term

    A definition of a function from which values of the function can be calculated in a finite number of steps.

  • recursive routinenounCompound term

    A routine that can call itself.

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.