Recidivist

Quick meaning: Recidivist is a noun meaning One who falls back into prior habits, especially criminal habits.

Meaning

One who falls back into prior habits, especially criminal habits.

More Meanings

1. Tending to fall back into prior habits, especially criminal habits.

Example Sentences

This specimen was of English parentage, was a professional burglar, a confirmed recidivist, and—since he habitually carried firearms—a potential homicide.

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.

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 than her husband.

Although there is no single factor underlying aggressive behavior in children, my own 30-plus years looking into the relationship between excessive parental discipline and delinquency has convinced me that the violent, recidivist, male juvenile delinquent who was not raised on the belt, board, cord, or fist is nonexistent.

Word Forms

• recidivists

Synonyms for recidivist

Depending on context, synonyms include recidive, recidivous, reversionist, repeater, backslider.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include backslider, repeater, reversionist, repeat, persistent, habitual.

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