1. The return of something over and over again: According to Laura's doctor, she had recursions of coughing which he diagnosed was caused by smoking too much.
2. In computer programming, a process of defining a program, a function, a routine, or a procedure in terms of itself: Manfred used a function of recursion from within the same operation to compute a given series of whole numbers.
3. Etymology: from late Latin recursion; literally, "a running back"; from Latin recurs-, the past participle stem of recurrere, "to run back, to run again".