RETROGRADE • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Retrograde

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/rˈɛtrəgrˌeɪd/ Listen

verb

Retrograde v. i. (past & past part. retrograded; pres. part. retrograding)

To go in a retrograde direction; to move, or appear to move, backward, as a planet.

Hence, to decline from a better to a worse condition, as in morals or intelligence.

adjective

Retrograde adj.

(Astron.) Apparently moving backward, and contrary to the succession of the signs, that is, from east to west, as a planet. "And if he be in the west side in that condition, then is he retrograde."

Tending or moving backward; having a backward course; contrary; as, a retrograde motion; opposed to progressive. "Progressive and not retrograde." "It is most retrograde to our desire."

Declining from a better to a worse state; as, a retrograde people; retrograde ideas, morals, etc.

See images of 'Retrograde'

Etymology of 'Retrograde'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Retrograde" Quotes from Famous Books

... I will not close this lengthened answer, without suggesting a suspicion, that those who have taken the notion that the Act of 1862 was a retrograde step, have done so without comparing for ...

— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... islands there is no native province or settlement which resists conversion or does not desire it. But, as above stated, baptism has been postponed in some districts, for lack of workers to remain with the people, in order that they may not retrograde and return to their idolatries. In this work, the best that is possible is done, for the mission-fields are very large and extensive. In many districts the religious make use, in their visitas, of certain ...

— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair

... remains of Aztec theistic influence, and the superstitions of both systems hold the ignorant peasantry of Mexico in enduring thrall. Much of beauty and pathetic quaintness there is in this strong religious sentiment, which no thinking observer will deride; much of retrograde ignorance, which he ...

— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... Why judge of all women from Ariadne alone? The very struggle of women for education and sexual equality, which I look upon as a struggle for justice, precludes any hypothesis of a retrograde movement." ...

— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... the system of political wisdom stereotyped, like Mr. Cobbett's Gold against Paper, so as to admit of no farther alterations or improvements, or correction of errors of the press? When did the experience of mankind become stationary or retrograde, so that we must act from the obsolete inferences of past periods, not from the living impulse of existing circumstances, and the consolidated force of the knowledge and reflection of ages up to the present ...

— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

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