| 释义 |
regressive, a.|rɪˈgrɛsɪv|
[f. regress v.]
1. a. Retrogressive; returning, passing back.
1634T. Carew Cœlum Brit. Wks. (1824) 162 Let those fires..the disorder shew Of thy regressive paces here below. 1728Pemberton Newton's Philos. 218 This regressive motion will be greatest, when the nodes are in the quarters. 1759Pullein in Phil. Trans. LI. 22 This received a progressive and regressive motion by means of two wheels. 1812Woodhouse Astron. x. 79 The equinoctial point would have moved to the west, or have been regressive. 1865Masson Rec. Brit. Philos. 100 The regressive or contractive movement of the Absolute out of the finite..back into itself. 1888Wright tr. Brugmann's Compar. Gram. §644 Transforming operations are far more frequent in a regressive..than..in a progressive direction.
b. Moving back into an inferior condition; decadent, declining. rare—1.
1854De Quincey Templars' Dial. Wks. IV. 238 note, Agriculture, as an art benefiting by experience, has never yet been absolutely regressive, though not progressive by such striking leaps..as manufacturing art.
c. Acting in a backward direction; retroactive; spec. of a tax, that bears proportionately harder on persons with lower incomes.
regressive assimilation, assimilation of a sound to one following it, as in comp- from conp-.
1888Wright tr. Brugmann's Compar. Gram. §603 If a monophthong arose from two vowels having a different quality, the levelling was sometimes progressive..; sometimes regressive. 1889R. T. Ely Pol. Econ. vi. ii. (1891) 308 Indirect taxes are said to be, in their effect on the citizens, regressive. 1889Cent. Dict., Regressive assimilation. 1924F. M. Stenton in Mawer & Stenton Introd. Survey Eng. Place-Names ix. 174 Some of these names, which enter into local nomenclature in considerable numbers, may be due to ‘regressive assimilation’. 1939[see progressive a. 2 c]. 1964C. Barber Ling. Change Present-Day Eng. iii. 62 Regressive assimilation..in which the sound exerting the influence comes later in the word than the one influenced. 1976Hansard Commons 9 June 1597 The [licence] fee is a poll tax and it is regressive. It bears very hard on the worse-off.
d. Psychol. Of, pertaining, or relating to psychological regression.
1926J. I. Suttie tr. Ferenczi's Further Contrib. xi. 137 Besides this regressive trait that fetters the patients to their bed..there may also be at work..the ‘secondary’ function of the neurosis. 1957P. Lafitte Person in Psychol. xi. 161 Concentration camp life has plenty of examples of exceptional, as well as of regressive, behaviour. 1969Listener 22 May 736/2 It [sc. The Boston Strangler] seeks to entertain by feeding us on clinical information about behaviour of the most regressive kind. 1970R. F. Bales Personality & Interpersonal Behav. iii. 49 To..teach in such a way presumably helps one's normal defenses by providing in one's overt behavior a good example for the more regressive inner self.
2. Philos. Proceeding from effect to cause, or from particular to universal.
1836–7Sir W. Hamilton Metaph. ii. (1877) I. 26 The affirmation of a God being thus a regressive inference, from the existence of a special class of effects to the existence of a special character of cause. 1877E. Caird Philos. Kant i. 132 The regressive process whereby science discovers the universal from the particular.
3. Med. Tending towards, of the nature of, degeneration or decomposition.
c1865Circ. Sc. I. 334/2 In the very tissues, a regressive metamorphosis..has already begun. 1898Allbutt's Syst. Med. V. 176 Before the patient's death regressive changes have already set in.
4. Geogr. Of, pertaining to, or being a regression of the sea.
1937Bull. Amer. Assoc. Petroleum Geologists XXI. 1436 Near the close of this regressive movement the Loma Novio, Government Wells, and Chernosky Sand members were deposited. 1950Ibid. XXXIV. 284 The regressive type of bioherm or reef may contain within it back-reef types of sediments such as red shale and anhydrite, but the transgressive type does not. 1968D. L. Eicher Geologic Time ii. 49 Transgressive and regressive sequences generally do not contain a complete sedimentary record of all environments that prevailed laterally at the time. 1978Nature 29 June 749/2 There seems little reason to invoke oscillations in sea level..to account for any other transgressive or regressive sequences observed.
Hence reˈgressively adv., reˈgressiveness.
1853W. Bagehot in Prospective Rev. IX. 421 There was a want of prospectiveness and a superfluous amount of regressiveness. 1854De Quincey War Wks. IV. 268 Twenty or thirty years earlier still, they had been ascribed to Voltaire, and so on, regressively, to many other wits. 1856― Confess. (1862) 233 Moving regressively from the end to the beginning. 1899G. Matheson Stud. Portrait Christ. I. ix. 108 It has been said that Christianity is a progressive religion; to me its distinctive feature is its regressiveness. |