RECESSIVE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Recessive

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/rəsˈɛsɪv/ Listen

adjective

Recessive adj.

Going back; receding.

(Genetics) Not appearing in the phenotype unless both alleles of the organism have the same trait; of genetic characteristics, or of the genes coding for such characteristics, in diploid organisms. Opposite of dominant; hemophilia is a recessive trait.

noun

Recessive n. (Genetics) A genetic trait determined by a recessive (2) allele; a trait not appearing in the phenotype unless both chromosomes of the organism have the same allele; also, an allele which is recessive (2).

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Etymology of 'Recessive'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Recessive" Quotes from Famous Books

... from the history, it seems certain that no results such as shown by Dugdale could have followed from inheritance. Defectiveness is a recessive factor; normality a dominant one. If such were not true, this would be a world of feeble-minded. If the Mendelian law held good in this regard, from a union of a defective and a normal person, three out of four would be normal, but as a matter of fact, the percentage ...

— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow

... complete albinism among animals is always recessive; and partial albinism (piebald) is always recessive to complete pigmentation (self-coloured). When an albino mouse, rat, guinea-pig or rabbit is crossed with either a pure self or pure pied-coloured form, the offspring are similar to, though not always ...

— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... Mendelians have given much attention to facts of this nature; and though their general method of exposition seems to me quite unjustifiably exact and precise, it cannot be denied that it is often vividly illuminating. It is so in this connexion. They distinguish between "dominant" and "recessive" qualities, and they establish cases in which parents with all the dominant characteristics produce offspring of recessive type. Recessive qualities are constantly being masked by dominant ones and emerging again in the next generation. It ...

— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells