Iteration

Research

One cycle of drafting, feedback, and revision; research and writing typically improve through iteration rather than a single attempt.

Sources

1. Merriam-Webster — iteration merriam-webster.com accessed 23 September 2026

Merriam-Webster gives three senses that matter here: a version or incarnation; “the action or process of repeating”, including procedures “where repetitions yield successively closer results”; and a single execution within a repetitive sequence. First recorded in the fifteenth century. The middle sense is the methodological one — iteration is repetition that converges, not repetition that merely recurs.

Merriam-Webster is cited as the dictionary of record: where an entry defines a word rather than a position, a dictionary is the primary source for it. The research usage above is this lexicon’s own.

Deeper treatment: this term also has a full entry in the Business Library.

Related terms

• Abbreviation
• Abstract
• Abstraction
• Academic Database
• Analysis
• Annotation

From the AJG lexicon archive (July 2026).