different between recurrence vs recursion

English

Etymology

recurrent +? -ence, cognate with Latin recurrentia, from recurr?ns (“returning back, recurring”), form of recurr? (“I return, I recur”) (English recur).

Noun

recurrence (countable and uncountable, plural recurrences)

1. Return or reversion to a certain state.
2. The instance of recurring; frequent occurrence.
   • I. Taylor

     I shall insensibly go on from a rare to a frequent recurrence to the dangerous preparations.

3. A return of symptoms as part of the natural progress of a disease.
4. Recourse.

Synonyms

• (instance of recurring): reoccurrence; see also Thesaurus:reoccurrence

Hyponyms

• recrudescence
• reemergence
• resurgence

Related terms

• recur
• recurrent
• recursive
• recursivity
• recursion

Translations

References

• Douglas Harper (2001–2021) , “recurrence”, in Online Etymology Dictionary

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin recursi? (“the act of running back or again, return”), from recurr? (“run back; return”), from re- (“back, again”) + curr? (“run”).

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -??(r)??n

Noun

recursion (countable and uncountable, plural recursions)

1. The act of recurring.
2. (mathematics) The act of defining an object (usually a function) in terms of that object itself.

   • 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 struc-
     tures. For example, one Clause can be embedded inside another indefinitely
     many times, [...]

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

3. (computing) The invocation of a procedure from within itself.

   This function uses recursion to compute factorials.

Derived terms

• tail recursion
• infinite recursion

Related terms

• recur
• recurrent
• recurrence
• recurse
• recursive
• recursivity

Translations

Anagrams

• coinsurer