Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To return to an earlier, inferior, or less complex condition.
  • intransitive verb To go or move backward.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Retrogradation; falling off; decline.
  • To move backward; retrograde.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun rare Retrogression.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb intransitive To return to an earlier, simpler or worse condition; to regress.
  • verb intransitive To go backwards; to retreat.
  • verb intransitive To return to bad behaviour; to relapse.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb get worse or fall back to a previous condition
  • verb go back to bad behavior

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin retrōgradī, *retrōgress- : retrō-, retro- + gradī, to go; see ghredh- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin retrōgressus, perfect active participle of retrōgradior ("retrograde").

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Examples

  • And in 1985, when Grace Bumbry was a sensation as Bess in a Metropolitan Opera production, she slammed the opera: "I thought it beneath me, I felt I had worked far too hard, that we had come far too far to have to retrogress to 1935."

    Jesse Kornbluth: An African-American Woman Wrote To Me: The Help Makes Us Look Ignorant & One-Dimensional 2010

  • And in 1985, when Grace Bumbry was a sensation as Bess in a Metropolitan Opera production, she slammed the opera: "I thought it beneath me, I felt I had worked far too hard, that we had come far too far to have to retrogress to 1935."

    Jesse Kornbluth: An African-American Woman Wrote To Me: The Help Makes Us Look Ignorant & One-Dimensional 2010

  • I'm not advocating that women retrogress to the brainless housewives of the '50s who spent afternoons baking macaroni sculptures and keeping Betty Crocker files.

    The Failure Of Feminism 2008

  • So while Black communities retrogress into crime, poverty and hopelessness, with Black families in tatters and living in a kind of pervasive chaos that exists on a day-to-day basis, these Black leaders offer carefully crafted “politically correct” speeches, sport natty Armani suits, and boast about how they are the only “Blacks on the block where white people live.”

    The Invisible, Irrelevant Black Leadership 2007

  • All six called for peaceful and democratic elections with the leader of the main opposition Ernest Koroma of the All People's Congress (APC) stressing that "the polls will put Sierra Leone in a position to advance or retrogress".

    ANC Daily News Briefing 2007

  • By contrast, he writes, "when living standards stagnate or decline, most societies make little if any progress toward any of these goals, and in all too many instances they plainly retrogress."

    Indian Food, Hold the Growth! 2007

  • By contrast, he writes, "when living standards stagnate or decline, most societies make little if any progress toward any of these goals, and in all too many instances they plainly retrogress."

    Archive 2007-07-01 2007

  • The whole area will retrogress into chaotic conditions.

    CNN Transcript May 24, 2006 2006

  • The whole area will retrogress into chaotic conditions.

    CNN Transcript May 25, 2006 2006

  • Should we continue to stagnate or retrogress while the rest of the world moves forward?

    ANC Daily News Briefing 2000

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