recursive
- 01 C1 Advanced
describes a process or rule that refers back to itself, often creating a repeating pattern.
pertaining to a process, rule, or definition that invokes or refers back to itself, often resulting in self-similarity.
Simple“The artist created a recursive image of a painter painting a picture of himself.”
In context“The novel's recursive structure, where characters read a book about their own lives, creates a complex layer of meta-fiction.”
Synonymsself referentialrepeating - 02 C1 Advanced
describes a computer program or math rule that calls or uses itself to solve a problem.
relating to a function, algorithm, or subroutine that calls itself until a base condition is met.
Simple“The programmer used a recursive function to calculate the total sum of the list.”
In context“Recursive algorithms are particularly efficient for traversing tree structures, though they require careful management of the call stack to avoid overflow errors.”
UsageUsually non-gradable; a function is either recursive or it is not.
Synonyms
Learned borrowing from New Latin recursīvus. Equivalent to recurse + -ive.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.