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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

recur.

Of an event, situation, etc.: to appear or happen again, especially repeatedly.

5 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/ɹɪˈkɜː/Australia, Received-Pronunciation/ɹɪˈkɜɹ/Canada, General-American/ɹɪˈkɛː//ɹɪˈkɜː(ɹ)/
  1. Of an event, situation, etc.: to appear or happen again, especially repeatedly.

    intransitive
    The theme of the prodigal son recurs later in the third act.
  2. Of an event, situation, etc.: to appear or happen again, especially repeatedly. Of a disease or symptom: to happen again, especially repeatedly or after a remission or an apparent recovery.

    intransitive
  3. Of a memory, thought, etc.: to come to the mind again.

    intransitive
  4. To speak, think, or write about something again; to go back or return to a memory, a subject, etc.

    dated · intransitive
  5. Followed by to, or (Scotland, obsolete) on or upon: to have recourse to someone or something for assistance, support, etc.; to appeal, to resort, to turn to.

    archaic · intransitive
  6. Synonym of recurse (“to execute a procedure recursively”).

    intransitive
  7. Often in the form recurring following a number: of a numeral or group of numerals in a decimal fraction: to repeat indefinitely.

    intransitive
    One-third can be written in decimal form as 0.3333 …, or point three-recurring.
  8. Followed by into or to: to go to a place again; to return.

    intransitive · obsolete
  9. Followed by into or to: To go back to doing an activity, or to using a thing; to return.

    intransitive · obsolete
  10. Followed by to: to go to a place; to resort.

    intransitive · obsolete · rare
  11. Followed by from: to move or run back from something; to recede, to withdraw.

    intransitive · obsolete · rare
Where this word comes from

Learned borrowing from Latin recurrō (“to hurry or run back; to return, revert”), from re- (prefix meaning ‘back, backwards’) + currō (“to hasten, hurry; to move, travel; to run”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ḱers- (“to run”)). cognates * Anglo-Norman recurre, recorre (“to have recourse to”) * Catalan recórrer * Italian ricorrer * Old French recourir (Middle French recourir; modern French recourir (“to have recourse to; to run again; to run back”)) * Old Occitan recorre * Portuguese recorrer * Spanish recorrer

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.