1511–12 in J. B. Paul Accts. Treasurer Scotl. (1902) IV. 325 To Ylay herold..for thair crying larges one new ȝeir day, deliverit eftir the auld ricurand use.

1665 Bp. G. Burnet Disc. Memory Sir R. Fletcher 71 The recurring defects of the daily imperfections which annoyed him in his Pilgrimage.

a1711 T. Ken Hymnarium 32 in Wks. (1721) II. Throughout his annual and re-curring Race, He never stops, but always changes Place.

1740 E. Smith Forty Two Serm. I. xv. 279 We determine with ourselves to be constant Improvers of those recurring Times and Opportunities that are meetest for it [sc. serious reflection].

1783 G. Crabbe Village ii. 35 To bid the still-recurring thoughts depart.

1804–6 S. Smith Elem. Sketches Moral Philos. (1850) xii. 168 Every recurring year contributes its remedy to these infringements on justice and good sense.

1850 R. Gordon-Cumming Five Years Hunter's Life S. Afr. II. xvii. 20 The greater part of the forest consisting of the ever-recurring wait-a-bits.

1851 J. Paget Lect. Tumours v. 55/2 For one group, the name of ‘Recurring Fibroid Tumours’ may, for the present, suffice.

1865 Ld. Tennyson 3 Sonnets to Coquette iii, in Selections 196 Fancy came..And chased away the still-recurring gnat.

1875 B. Jowett tr. Plato Dialogues (ed. 2) III. 277 The various letters in all their recurring sizes and combinations.

1919 S. Sassoon Picture Show 33 Last night I dreamt an old recurring scene—Some complex out of childhood.

1925 B. Rackham tr. E. Hannover Pottery & Porcelain I. iv. 355 But at an early stage they give way to plant ornament, in which a feather-like leaf..is a constantly-recurring element.

1947 M. E. Boylan This Tremendous Lover (new ed.) iv. 34 Throughout his Epistles, there runs the ever-recurring theme.

1958 J. E. Morton Molluscs ii. 44 They are..the raw material of the conchologist..and they raise for us the recurring problem of the non-adaptiveness of micro-evolutionary detail.

2000 L. M. Principe in F. L. Holmes & T. H. Levere Instruments & Exper. Hist. Chem. iii. 65 Consider, then, one often-recurring image in accounts of attempts to make the Philosophers' Stone: Hermes' Tree.

1658 T. Carwell Labyrinthus Cantuariensis i. 1 Dedalus..us'd all his Inventive industry in framing a Subterraneous, darksome Prison, with such redoubled Turnings, perplexed Windings, and tortuous Meanders, that who ever entred into it, might indeed wander up and down within its involved and recurring paths, but never be able to get either back, or thorow it.

1715 tr. D. Gregory Elements Astron. II. iv. §2. 698 Kepler did not like Circles or other recurring Curves for the Motion of Comets.

1748 J. Robertson Gen Treat. Mensuration (ed. 2) 33 Every circulating or recurring decimal, is a geometrical series infinitely decreasing to 0.

1796 W. Frend Princ. Algebra 76 To find a common fraction or whole number, to which a recurring decimal with several series of recurring numbers is nearly equal.

1853 W. F. Greenfield Pract. & Theory Arithm. App. 157 The rule for conversion of a pure recurring decimal into a vulgar fraction is evident.

1920 C. Roberts in E. J. Macintire tr. C. Gad Johan Bojer App. 258 Hope, like a recurring decimal, pours through their sum total of things.

1945 L. MacNeice Poems ii. 59 A little dapper man.., he lived by measuring things And died like a recurring decimal Run off the page, refusing to be curtailed.

2004 J. Houssart Low Attainers in Primary Math. vii. 115 Decimals, particularly recurring decimals, frequently arose in this lesson.

1738 A. de Moivre Doctr. of Chances (ed. 2) 193 I call that a recurring Series which is so constituted, that having taken at pleasure any number of its Terms, each following Term shall be related to the same number of preceding Terms, according to a constant law of Relation.

1841 Penny Cycl. XIX. 342/1 Some use may thus be made of recurring series in various questions of the theory of probabilities.

1993 N.Z. Jrnl. Math. 22 85 (title) Integer sums of recurring series.

1878 H. Jackson in Lancet 18 May 716/2 As a rule, the patient, who can say nothing, can utter something; he has a stock word or phrase which comes out at any time. This is best called a ‘recurring utterance’.

1899 T. C. Allbutt et al. Syst. Med. VIII. 411 The articulation of such words or ‘recurring utterances’, as they are now commonly termed.

1991 Jrnl. Anthropol. Res. 47 289 First, the recurring utterance became invested with intonation appropriate to circumstances; then the patient was occasionally able to suppress it.

2005 Brain & Lang. 95 283/1 The most common type in the patients' recurring utterances is the CV syllable with the consonant in the majority of cases being realized as an obstruent.