recidivist
/ɹɪˈsɪdɪvɪst/
recidivist noun: one who falls back into prior habits, especially criminal habits.
Noun
recidivist (plural recidivists)
- One who falls back into prior habits, especially criminal habits.
- This specimen was of English parentage, was a professional burglar, a confirmed recidivist, and—since he habitually carried firearms—a potential homicide.1914, R. Austin Freeman, chapter 2, in The Uttermost Farthing
- Persistent recidivists are "accidentally" left on the next habitable world. This practice of abandoning criminals on other people's planets is a point of friction between the quarians and the systems they pass through. Captains rarely have another choice; with space and resources at a premium...2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Quarians: Law and Defense Codex entry
- Synonyms:
- repeat offender
Adjective
recidivist (comparative more recidivist, superlative most recidivist)
- Tending to fall back into prior habits, especially criminal habits.
- To return to Macbeth, I should like to note another psychological intuition of [William] Shakespeare’s, which is that women commit fewer crimes than men; but when they commit them they are more cruel and more obstinately recidivist than men. Lady Macbeth, for example, is more inhumanly ferocious...1897 August, Enrico Ferri, “The Delinquent in Art and in Literature”, in The Atlantic Monthly: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics, volume LXXX, number CCCCLXXVIII, Boston, Mass....
- Court programs, a comparatively recent innovation in the rehabilitation of drunkenness offenders, originally stemmed from the interest of individual judges and magistrates concerned about the treadmill of waste among recidivist alcoholics.1971, J. George Strachan, “Legal and Law Enforcement”, in Practical Alcoholism Programming: An Honorable Approach to Man’s Alcoholism Problem, Vancouver, B.C.: Mitchell Press Limited, →OCLC, part I...
- Synonyms:
- recidive, recidivous
recidivist meaning in Malayalam and Indonesian
recidivist in Malayalam
- സ്വാഭാവിക കുറ്റവാളി, സ്ഥിരം കുറ്റവാളി
recidivist in Indonesian
- one who falls back into prior habits, especially criminal habits
- residivis
Synonyms of recidivist
Forms of recidivist
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | recidivists |
| Adjective | |
| comparative | more recidivist |
| superlative | most recidivist |
Origin of recidivist
From French récidiviste, from Latin recidīvus (“returning, recurring”). Compare recidivous, -ist. By surface analysis, recidive + -ist.
Words formed from recidivist
Questions about recidivist
- What does recidivist mean?
- Recidivist means one who falls back into prior habits, especially criminal habits.
- What is recidivist in Malayalam?
- Recidivist in Malayalam is സ്വാഭാവിക കുറ്റവാളി, സ്ഥിരം കുറ്റവാളി. See Recidivist meaning in Malayalam.
- What part of speech is recidivist?
- Recidivist can be a noun or an adjective.
- How do you pronounce recidivist?
- Recidivist is pronounced /ɹɪˈsɪdɪvɪst/.
- What is the plural of recidivist?
- The plural of recidivist is recidivists.
Words near recidivist in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: recidivist (page history and authors); recidivist (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.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-recidivist.wav.
Cite this entry: “recidivist.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/recidivist. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.