Receding describes a hairline moving back from the forehead. A receding hairline, receding at the temples, hair receding.
It starts at the temples in the usual male pattern and is driven by hormones and inheritance rather than by anything done or not done. Of water and of memory it means drawing back. Note recede, from the Latin for going back — the same root as recession.
1adjectiverecedingMoving back, of a hairline.
“He already had a receding hairline by the time he was thirty.”
receding is a drawing back.
Latin
recedere — to withdraw; to go back
Middle French
receder
Middle English
receden
English
recede
English, today
receding
Built from
recede Middle English receden, from Middle French receder and its etymon Latin recedere (“to withdraw; to go back”), from re- + cedere (“to go”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA