Fractal
Etymology
Coined in 1975 by the mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot from Latin fractus, "broken, fractured" (from frangere, "to break"). He wanted a name for rough, fragmented forms whose detail persists no matter how far you zoom, unlike the smooth curves of classical geometry. The word deliberately evokes something broken into ever-finer pieces.
noun · /FRAK-tul/
A shape or pattern that looks broadly the same at every scale, so zooming in reveals smaller copies of the whole.
What it names
Why some things — coastlines, org charts, arguments — have the same structure whether you look at the big picture or one small corner of it.
Example
The dysfunction was fractal: the same blaming that poisoned the whole company reappeared inside every team and every one-on-one.
Related idea
A fractal is the self-similar pattern itself; recursion is the repeating process that generates such a pattern by reapplying one rule at every scale.