A means of expressing certain higher-order functions in a first order language. Proposed by Phil Wadler. Higher-order macros cannot be recursive at the top level but they may contain recursive definitions. E.g.

        map f l = m l
                  where
                  m []           = []
                  m (x:xs) = f x : m xs

Expanding a call to this macro is equivalent to specialising a call to map in its first argument.

See partial evaluation.