How to Use recessive in a Sentence

recessive

adjective
  • Or would my blonde hair and blue eyes have snuck through some unknown recessive traits of his?
    — Jackie Bryant, Harper's BAZAAR, 4 Sep. 2018
  • But growing a pea like that would require finding a way to bring forward a rare recessive gene.
    — Norman Vanamee, Town & Country, 11 July 2019
  • Surely this is the most recessive self-portrait in the history of art.
    — Eric Gibson, WSJ, 26 Aug. 2022
  • White tigers are the result of inbreeding to preserve a rare recessive gene.
    — Quinn Clark, jsonline.com, 27 Oct. 2025
  • Lavin can make a joke out of a single inhalation, which turns out to be a good match for his more recessive sarcasm.
    — Vulture, 6 Nov. 2022
  • They're thought to be controlled by the same gene, but red hair is recessive, and freckles are a dominant trait.
    — Lauren Valenti, Marie Claire, 31 Mar. 2017
  • Basically, one tiny recessive gene keeps it from being a peach.
    — Catherine Lo, Good Housekeeping, 30 May 2019
  • And these combinations also suggest the game is playing with the idea of recessive genes.
    — Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 13 Apr. 2020
  • But there was this recessive gene in the party that went through the Pat Buchanans and Sarah Palins.
    — New York Times, 17 Mar. 2022
  • Fine porcelain is also hand-painted with crosshatches, blurred so that the pattern here is recessive rather than assertive.
    — Joan Juliet Buck, ELLE Decor, 29 Aug. 2018
  • That blotchiness, though present in 80 percent of house cats today, is recessive, and seldom seen in the wild.
    — Gemma Tarlach, Discover Magazine, 19 June 2017
  • The show as a whole presented an installation challenge that has been mostly met, but a lot of the images are small and recessive.
    — New York Times, 4 Feb. 2021
  • In order to give birth to a king cheetah cub, both parents must be carriers of the recessive allele — hence their rarity.
    — Carl Engelking, Discover Magazine, 6 Aug. 2014
  • Gyllenhaal does yet another appealing, recessive turn as a sad-sack doctor who’s been up in space longer than anybody else.
    — Vanityfair.com, VanityFair.com, 24 Mar. 2017
  • But many more have a recessive gene that causes mostly white fur interspersed with bits of brown, the Local reported.
    — Cleve R. Wootson Jr., chicagotribune.com, 15 Aug. 2017
  • The white tiger is produced by a genetic fluke that occurs when two orange tigers with rare recessive forms of a gene, called alleles, happen to breed.
    — Azzedine Downes, Scientific American, 22 June 2021
  • What makes Orchid different is its test can check for complex diseases and not just recessive conditions.
    — John Cumbers, Forbes, 7 Apr. 2021
  • Celia Falzone, the zoo curator, says both parents are normal colored, and the gene that turns a lion’s fur white is recessive.
    — Elaina Zachos, National Geographic, 21 July 2016
  • Even when both parents carry the recessive mutation of the same gene, there’s still only a 1 in 4 chance they’ll be affected.
    — PEOPLE.com, 23 Mar. 2018
  • Gantz bred a round of fruit flies that had been engineered to carry both the Crispr machinery and a single copy of a recessive gene for yellow coloration.
    — Jennifer Kahn, New York Times, 8 Jan. 2020
  • As for coat colors, the test looks for variants in chocolate, dominant black, recessive black, fawn, recessive red, and widow’s peak (a blend of white and dark hair).
    — Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi, Discover Magazine, 21 Feb. 2022
  • That’s because a recessive gene (or genes) likely cause this color morph, as it’s called, and interbreeding with other black bears would soon overpower it.
    — Grant Currin, National Geographic, 24 July 2020
  • Most of us carry recessive genes for various diseases inside our DNA.
    — Eric Betz, Discover Magazine, 15 Apr. 2019
  • Moose with bright white fur more commonly obtain this feature from a recessive gene that causes the animal to grow white with specks of brown—a condition referred to as piebald.
    — Sarah Gibbens, National Geographic, 14 Aug. 2017
  • This explains the simple power of Punnett squares and the inheritance patterns of recessive traits.
    — Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 17 Sep. 2013
  • Both parents carry a recessive gene for Pompe disease, which means there’s a 1 in 4 chance that a baby will inherit the condition.
    — Time, 10 Nov. 2022
  • Pink grasshoppers are the result of a genetic mutation called erythrism, which affects a recessive gene similar to the one that causes albinism.
    — Amanda O'Donnell and Joshua Bote, USA TODAY, 20 Feb. 2020
  • Annie has two teenage children with her supportive if somewhat recessive husband, Steve (Gabriel Byrne).
    — Justin Chang, latimes.com, 7 June 2018
  • Natural redheads rarely have blue eyes because both red hair and blue eyes are both recessive traits, according to Medical Daily.
    — Kalin Kipling, sacbee, 5 Nov. 2017
  • This makes sense, because the French Canadian population has long been known to have a somewhat high burden of recessive diseases.
    — Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 30 Sep. 2013

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'recessive.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: