https://www.quora.com/api/mobile…
The Magister:
True. But should you forgive the recidivist seven times? Nay, verily, seventy times seven.
Recidivist… what a woody-sounding Masiello Mega Word!
Recidivism (/rᵻˈsɪdᵻvɪzəm/; from recidive and ism, from Latin recidīvus “recurring”, from re– “back” and cadō “I fall”) is the act of a person repeating an undesirable behavior after they had either experienced negative consequences of that behavior, or had been trained to extinguish that behavior. It is also used to refer to the percentage of former prisoners who are rearrested for a similar offense.
The term is frequently used in conjunction with criminal behavior and substance abuse. (Recidivism is a synonym for “relapse”, which is more commonly used in medicine and in the disease model of addiction.
The “plain English” synonym is “repeat offender”. But the Latin has the advantage of being derived from “fall”, as in “fall off the wagon” or “falling into sin”. And recidivism applies more generally than just the legal system; in the comment’s context, it really was about sin.