recursion means the act of recurring. It carries an Arena rating of 1609, earned across 3 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, recursion ranks #880 of 17,124 for Most Sublime Words, #1,090 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #1,634 of 17,143 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words, #2,121 of 17,131 for Scariest Words.
recursion is pronounced /ɹɪˈkɜː(ɹ)ʒən/.
Why “recursion” is a great word
A method where the solution to a problem depends on solutions to smaller instances of the same problem, often involving a function calling itself. From the Latin recursiō ('the act of running back or again, return'), from recurrō ('run back; return'), from re- ('back, again') + currō ('run'). First attested in English c. 1610s. Unlike 'iteration' (which denotes repetition achieved through explicit, forward-moving loops) or 'recurrence' (which merely signals a broad return at intervals), recursion is a formal descent into nested self-similarity. It is the shape of a fern frond within a fern frond, the hall of mirrors where each reflection holds a smaller, identical room, and the story of a drawer containing a box containing the same story, written smaller—an endless regression that must, paradoxically, know when to stop, or consume itself entirely.
Etymology
Borrowed from Latin recursiō (“the act of running back or again, return”), from recurrō (“run back; return”), from re- (“back, again”) + currō (“run”).
noun
- The act of recurring.e.g.“The inhabitants predicate the recursion of these storms by numerous other signs, and are prompt to take every precaution to avoid their effects.” — 1852, William Hastings Macaulay, chapter XIX, in Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas:
- The act of defining an object (usually a function) in terms of that object itself.e.g.“n! = n × (n − 1)! (for n > 0) or 1 (for n = 0) defines the factorial function using recursion.”
- The invocation of a procedure from within itself.e.g.“This function uses recursion to compute factorials.”
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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