Word.ws English Dictionary

recidivism

/rɪˈsɪdɪvɪzm̩/

recidivism noun: committing new offenses after a crime committed in the past.

Noun

recidivism (countable and uncountable, plural recidivisms)

  1. Committing new offenses after a crime committed in the past.
    • The increase in criminal activity was attributed to recidivism.
    • Unintended mathwashing occurs when the algorithm is left unchecked, and, learning from historical data, amplifies social bias. The U.S. justice system uses an algorithm called COMPAS to determine a criminal's likelihood to re-offend. COMPAS has been proven by Pro Publica to predict that black...2018 January 29, Sophie Kleber, “As AI Meets the Reputation Economy, We're All Being Silently Judged”, in Harvard Business Review, Brighton, M.A.: Harvard Business Publishing, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived...
  2. Chronic repetition of criminal or other antisocial behavior.
  3. (broadly) Returning to a negative behavior after having stopped it for a period of time.
    • alcohol(ic) recidivism

recidivism meaning in Tamil, Malayalam and Arabic

recidivism in Tamil

மீண்டும் குற்றஞ்செய்யத்தலைப்படும் பான்மை, நோய்மீளல், மீண்டும் மீண்டும் குற்றம் புரிதல்

recidivism in Malayalam

കുറ്റകൃത്യങ്ങൾ ചെയ്യാനുള്ള സഹജവാസന

recidivism in Arabic

committing new offenses after being punished for a crime
عَوْد ʕawd

Forms of recidivism

pluralrecidivisms

Origin of recidivism

From French récidivisme, from Latin recidīvus (“returning, recurring”). Compare recidivous, -ism. By surface analysis, recidive + -ism.

Questions about recidivism

What does recidivism mean?
Recidivism means committing new offenses after a crime committed in the past.
What is recidivism in Tamil?
Recidivism in Tamil is மீண்டும் குற்றஞ்செய்யத்தலைப்படும் பான்மை, நோய்மீளல், மீண்டும் மீண்டும் குற்றம் புரிதல். See Recidivism meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is recidivism?
Recidivism is a noun.
How do you pronounce recidivism?
Recidivism is pronounced /rɪˈsɪdɪvɪzm̩/ (UK).
What is the plural of recidivism?
The plural of recidivism is recidivisms.

Words near recidivism in the dictionary

  1. recidivations
  2. recidive
  3. recidived
  4. recidives
  5. recidiving
  6. recidivism
  7. recidivisms
  8. recidivist
  9. recidivistic
  10. recidivistically
  11. recidivists

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: recidivism (page history and authors); recidivism (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); recidivism (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-recidivism.wav.

Cite this entry: “recidivism.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/recidivism. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.