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retrograde

[re-truh-greyd] / ˈrɛ trəˌgreɪd /


Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

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A bizarre hodgepodge of retrograde machismo and perfectly manicured nails.

From The Wall Street Journal Aug. 22, 2026

The best, and most popular, of these was Norman Lear’s generation-gap sitcom “All in the Family,” starring Carroll O’Connor as retrograde bigot Archie Bunker, and Rob Reiner as his liberal son-in-law, Mike.

From The Wall Street Journal Feb. 4, 2026

Cubism was not only dominant in 1921, when Keck made his stylistically retrograde statue, but its genesis owes much to African art.

From Los Angeles Times Oct. 22, 2025

Weronika had suffered a rare complication - unusual retrograde amnesia.

From BBC Feb. 25, 2025

In that letter Jefferson had mentioned Adams in passing as a retrograde thinker opposed to all forms of progress, one of the “ancients” rather than “moderns.”

From "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph J. Ellis

Sometimes it is said that the high retrogrades, or backs off to the west, allowing the storm track to come down the coast.

From Los Angeles Times Dec. 3, 2021

Known in our dancers’ nomenclature as “The King and Queen,” it is built primarily on one basic theme with its inversions, reversals and retrogrades.

From New York Times Sep. 8, 2015

All of the opera's other themes, accompaniments and leitmotifs are derived from endlessly ingenious extrapolations, inversions, retrogrades and other variations of the original row.

From Time Magazine Archive

He could goad the traditionalists beneath him, promote the "new thinkers," purge the retrogrades, and keep an eye out for obstructionism, sabotage, insurgency.

From Time Magazine Archive

If it falters and is no longer obeyed, if it is forced and pushed from without by a violent pressure, it ceases to control public affairs, and the social organization retrogrades by many steps.

From The French Revolution - Volume 1 by John Durand

Fu ture productions which fail to measure up to its stiff standards of achievement may be considered to have retrograded.

From Time Magazine Archive

Nor is a change of views necessarily a reproach to a politician, even though he may have retrograded or gone wrong.

From Modern Leaders: Being a Series of Biographical Sketches by Justin McCarthy

Some of the states during the last ten years have done nobly; others have evidently retrograded.

From Popular Education For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes by Ira Mayhew

As has been inevitably the case in similar instances, they retrograded.

From Women of America Woman: In all ages and in all countries Vol. 10 (of 10) by John Rouse Larus

The second way was conquest with incorporation, but without representation; and this lacking, the government retrograded and gradually became a despotism.

From A Review of the Systems of Ethics Founded on the Theory of Evolution by C. M. Williams

“Similar retrograding blocks in the past have been associated with periods of colder and wintry weather in the Eastern U.S.,” meteorologist John Homenuk wrote on Twitter.

From Washington Post Nov. 29, 2022

The four boys were looking for possible routes of escape when Red’s brother decided that in arbitration lay his salvation from this swiftly retrograding dilemma.

From "The Great Santini" by Pat Conroy

If, then, we accept the biological theory of social evolution, we are forced to the conclusion that the human race, instead of advancing, is really retrograding.

From The Spirit of American Government A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And Relation To Democracy by J. Allen (James Allen) Smith

But with the cage retrograding, soon they would be in the Revolutionary War.

From Astounding Stories, April, 1931 by Various

I am very glad this happened to you instead of an uneventful summer on the farm and retrograding, I am afraid.

From Helen Grant's Schooldays by Amanda M. Douglas




Vocabulary lists containing retrograde


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