recession
Pluralrecessions
- 1A period during which a country's economic activity declines, typically with falling production, trade, and employment.
Economists declared a recession after output shrank for two consecutive quarters.
Central banks often cut interest rates to soften the impact of a recession.
Similardownturn, slump, depression
Oppositeboom
Note
Economists often rely on a rule of thumb: negative real GDP growth, meaning output adjusted for inflation, over two consecutive quarters. Broader definitions look instead for a significant, widespread fall in output, employment and trade that lasts more than a few months. Its natural opposite is a boom, and the word applies the old sense of drawing back to a whole economy.
- 2The act or process of receding or withdrawing from a previous position.
The recession of the glacier exposed rock that had been buried for centuries.
The dentist measured the recession of the gums around several teeth.
Similarwithdrawal
Oppositeadvance
Note
The root meaning of the word is a going back, built from Latin re- ("back") and cēdō ("to go"). It can be literal, as with a retreating glacier or receding gums, or figurative: Jeremy Taylor, writing before 1667, has mercy rejoicing "upon the recessions of justice," with justice drawing back so that mercy can act. Withdrawal is the everyday word for the same idea.
- 3The ceremonial procession of clergy and choir out of the church at the close of a service.
The organist played a triumphant voluntary to accompany the recession.
As the recession began, the congregation joined in the closing hymn.
Note
Church ceremony runs in two directions: the procession brings clergy and choir in, and the recession takes them out again. That is why it is also called the return procession. The hymn sung while they leave takes its name from this sense and is known as the recessional.
- 4The act of ceding or granting something back to a previous holder or owner.
The settlement provided for the recession of the territory to its original government.
The contract called for the recession of the leased rights once the term expired.
Similarretrocession, return, restoration
- 5A period of sustained low temperatures that drives a reduction in living species; an ice age.
The recession brought glaciers south and forced cold-adapted species into shrinking refuges.
Paleontologists link the mass die-off to a prolonged climatic recession.
Similarglaciation
Note
Cooling is pictured here as a kind of retreat. In this use the word usually travels with a qualifier, climate recession or climatic recession, which keeps it from being read as the economic slump. Peter Vincent's The Biogeography of the British Isles (2019) ties one such recession to Britain's last glaciers, which ended about 10,000 years before the present as temperatures rose.
Had this climate recession not occurred, the settlements might have survived.
A climatic recession produced the region's last glaciers.
- 6A surgical procedure in which an eye muscle is detached and reattached farther back on the eyeball to reduce its pull.
The ophthalmologist recommended a recession of the lateral rectus muscle.
A bilateral recession can realign eyes that turn inward.
Oppositeresection
Note
Strabismus surgeons use it as the weakening move: setting a muscle's attachment farther back slackens its pull on the eye. It is named by muscle and side, as in a bilateral medial rectus recession or a bimedial recession. It is often paired with resection of the opposing muscle, for instance when correcting a large inward turn of the eye (esotropia).
Practice
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Origin
Borrowed from Latin recessio, from recedo ("to recede, retreat"), which combines re- ("back") and cedo ("to go").