recursive

adj

Etymology: Learned borrowing from New Latin recursīvus. Equivalent to recurse + -ive.

1. drawing upon itself, referring back.

   “The recursive nature of stories which borrow from each other”

2. of an expression, each term of which is determined by applying a formula to preceding terms
3. of a program or function that calls itself
4. which can be computed by a theoretical model of a computer, in a finite amount of time
5. whose characteristic function is recursive (4)