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📉 Economic decline 🕳️ A hollow ↩️ Moving back ⛪ Clergy exit 🔄 Giving back
recession

recession

858 4.6
A period when a country's business activity and jobs go down
  • noun
  • /rɪˈsɛʃən/
  • Specialized
translation icon : recesión
  • Due to the recession, however, sales are less than a quarter of what they should be.
  • economy in recession
  • unemployment and recession
  • period of recession

We're coming out of this Great Recession, the worst since the Great Depression.

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Examples

  • The economic recession resulted in a significant jump in unemployment rates across the country.

  • We're coming out of this Great Recession, the worst since the Great Depression.

    MIT OpenCourseWare

  • And I could see the Great Recession coming based upon our numbers.

  • Why is Britain set to be the first country into recession and the last country out?

  • And this was the biggest recession since the Great Depression.

  • In 2018, Ukraine was already in a state of deep economic recession and political crisis.

    Revealing Ukraine (2019)

  • A quiet town, Bristol has been hard hit by the recession of recent years.

    Fiction book (1994)

  • Economists are at odds as to whether the "Great Recession" has truly ended.

    Academic text (2012)

  • It's especially reassuring in a recession to have a steady source of income.

    Academic text (2011)

  • The country slid into recession in the summer of 1929.

    Academic text (2017)

Synonyms

downturn
vsrecession
69 4.4

A period when the economy or business gets worse

is a defined temporary decline marked by falling GDP and employment
slump
vsrecession
65 4.6

A period when business or the economy falls a lot

is a defined temporary decline marked by falling GDP and employment

Antonyms

growth
∞ 1.6

An increase in size, number, or importance of something

boom
214 2.8

A time of fast growth in the economy and more jobs

How Severe

depression
  • Specialized
39 4.0
recession
  • Specialized
858 4.6
slump
65 4.6
downturn
69 4.4
slowdown
53 3.7

Surface Forms

recession singular
recessions plural

Morphology

recession = recess (semi-transparent) = recess + ion

The economic sense is a metaphorical extension of 'withdrawal' or 'retreat' of activity; the connection exists but is domain-specific and not immediately obvious to all learners.

Etymology

Recession comes from the Latin recedere 'to go back' and shares its root with recede, so in economics a 'recession' is when the economy 'goes back' or shrinks after a period of growth.