RETROACTIVE • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Retroactive

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/rˌɛtroʊˈæktɪv/ Listen

Retroactive

adjective

Descriptive of any event or stimulus or process that has an effect on the effects of events or stimuli or process that occurred previously.

Affecting things past. Synonyms: ex post facto, retro. "An ex-post-facto law" , "Retro pay"

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"Retroactive" Quotes from Famous Books

... June 5, 1794, giving to the state courts concurrent jurisdiction in excise cases, removed the grievance of which Gallatin complained, the dragging of accused persons to Philadelphia for trial, but was not construed to be retroactive in its operation. The marshal, accordingly, found it to be his duty to serve the writs of May 31 against those who had fallen under their penalties. These writs were returnable in Philadelphia. They ...

— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... ceremonies; to omit them would be shocking and well-nigh impossible, yet to repeat them serves no end further than to avoid a sense of strangeness or inhibition. These automatisms, however, in working themselves out, are not without certain retroactive effects: they leave the system exhausted or relieved, and they have meantime played more or less agreeably on the senses. The music we make automatically we cannot help hearing incidentally; the sensation may even modify the expression, since sensation too ...

— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... obtained from the court of last resort. And if the decision annuls the law, it does so not from the time that the judgment of the court is rendered, but from the time the act in question was originally passed. This retroactive character of the judicial veto is strongly suggestive of the ex post facto legislation which the Constitution expressly forbids. By thus invalidating the law from the beginning it may leave a vast body of business contracts without legal protection ...

— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith

... Love has curious retroactive effects. As soon as Jean-Christophe discovered that he loved Minna, he discovered at the same time that he had always loved her. For three months they had been seeing each other almost every day without ever suspecting the existence of their love. But from the day when he did actually ...

— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... effect of such a gentle fantasy as his with some such emotion as one recalls a pleasant tale unexpectedly told when one feared a repetition of stale commonplaces, and I now feel a pang of retroactive self-reproach for not spending the whole evening after dinner in reading up the story of that most storied city where this Spanish castle received us. What better could I have done in the smoky warmth of our hearth-fire ...

— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells