How to Use recursion in a Sentence

recursion

noun
Definition of recursionnext
  • Build on the recursion one element at a time, looking for a pattern.
    — Quanta Magazine, 16 May 2019
  • There are two elements of this deck: land recursion, and landfall.
    — Joe Parlock, Forbes, 11 Mar. 2021
  • For decades, psychologists thought that recursion was a trait of humans alone.
    — Diana Kwon, Scientific American, 2 Nov. 2022
  • Since the 2016 election and all that has followed, in my head, the camera keeps pulling back. Veils lifting forever in a nightmarish recursion.
    — Brandy Jensen, The Cut, 14 May 2018
  • Lines of desire and frustration swirl around them in maddening recursion.
    — Josephine Livingstone, The New Republic, 24 Apr. 2018
  • Informally, recursion involves having an entity or action that refers to, acts on or is based on a copy or type of itself.
    — Quanta Magazine, 17 Apr. 2019
  • Daniel Everett, a linguist, claims that Pirahã, an Amazonian language, lacks recursion, and that its speakers do not talk about the distant past or future at all.
    — The Economist, 5 July 2018
  • In a neat bit of recursion, AI is also driving a diversification of chip designs.
    — Will Knight, Wired, 7 Sep. 2021
  • Cameron had introduced a computer-science term earlier in the hour: recursion.
    — Laura Bradley, vanityfair.com, 14 Oct. 2017
  • Such beliefs are belated, lapsed, overdue, like a book checked out from a library and then lost for decades; the story has moved indoors, the frontier has become one of recursion, quotation, paraphrase, allegory.
    — Jonathan Lethem, The New Yorker, 24 Oct. 2022
  • One individual went three layers deep into this sort of recursion.
    — Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 9 Feb. 2022
  • So the John in the photo was wearing a shirt featuring John wearing the photo of John wearing that shirt created a recursion that presumably continued for infinity.
    — Clark Collis, EW.com, 17 Oct. 2022
  • So in addition to programming, Primo also provides an introduction to recursion and the fine art of debugging.
    — Joseph Flaherty, WIRED, 10 Dec. 2013
  • Mr Everett claims that recursion is neither necessary nor sufficient for human language.
    — The Economist, 5 Oct. 2017
  • Dynamic programming was developed in the 1950s to solve complex problems using two key techniques based on recursion and memoization.
    — Janakiram Msv, Forbes, 27 Mar. 2022
  • When the 2020 study on recursive capacities in humans and monkeys was published, some experts remained unconvinced that the monkeys understood recursion.
    — Diana Kwon, Scientific American, 2 Nov. 2022
  • Whether recursion is universal, for example, is contested.
    — The Economist, 22 Aug. 2019
  • One speculation is that animals might use recursion to represent relationships within their social groups.
    — Diana Kwon, Scientific American, 2 Nov. 2022
  • Narrow definitions focus on syntax and recursion, structural properties shared by all human languages today.
    — Bridget Alex, Discover Magazine, 5 Nov. 2018
  • Our April Insights puzzle explored the magical concept of recursion, a self-referencing process that can create unending complexity from simple beginnings.
    — Quanta Magazine, 16 May 2019
  • Even in the academy, fellow polymaths were bedazzled by the breadth of his boundless ruminations into metaphysics, modal logic, recursion theory, identity materialism and the ontological nature of numbers.
    — Sam Roberts, New York Times, 21 Sep. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'recursion.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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