Recession

How to spell recession

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce recession

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does recession mean?

1. nounA period of temporary economic decline, marked by falling trade and rising unemployment.
2. nounThe act of moving back or gradually withdrawing from a position.

Recession in a sentence

• The company froze all hiring during the recession.

• The dentist noted a steady recession of the gums around two molars.

• Many families cut back on holidays throughout the long recession.

• The slow recession of the floodwater left a thick layer of silt on the road.

Where does recession come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin recessio, meaning a 'going back' or 'withdrawal', which was built on the verb recedere, literally 'to go back', from re- 'back' and cedere 'to go or yield'. That same cedere root gives English a whole family of relatives, including 'recede', 'concede', 'proceed', and 'access', and noticing the shared 'cess' element is a useful guard against doubling the wrong letter. English adopted recession in the early seventeenth century, at first simply for the act of receding or moving back, as a tide or a crowd might do. The familiar economic sense, a marked decline in trade and activity, is much more recent and became common in the twentieth century, especially through American financial writing. The single c and double s in the middle trip people up precisely because the ear hears a soft 'sesh' sound that gives no clue to the spelling.

How the word is built

• re- (back)
• cess (from Latin cedere/cessus: to go, withdraw)
• -ion (noun-forming suffix)