retrocessiveadj.

1757 Monthly Rev. Aug. 125 To their having a less degree of velocity is ascribed a more frequent retrocessive motion in the veins than in the arteries.

1801 E. W. Brayley & J. Britton Beauties Eng. & Wales I. 331 The castle of Tunbridge..appears to have been built..probably..not before the time of William Rufus. Yet we here view a retrocessive adoption of the style first used by the Anglo-Normans.

1899 W. H. Norton in Ann. Rep. for 1898 (Iowa Geol. Soc.) 402 Their affluents..have pushed their headwaters by retrocessive erosion back far into the areas originally undrained.

a1959 C. Sachs Wellsprings of Music (1965) vii. 189 Whatever the roots of this polyphony may be, it is quite definitely not a retrocessive adaptation of European polyphony.

2005 N.Y. Rev. Bks. 6 Oct. 43/1 The revelation is geographical for Kristin but temporal for the reader,..as a world many centuries old emerges with crystalline clarity. Indeed, the book's deepest pleasures may be retrocessive.

1816 T. L. Peacock Headlong Hall x. 95 ‘All things’, says Virgil, ‘have a retrocessive tendency, and grow worse and worse by the inevitable doom of fate.’

1851 50th Ann. Rep. Trustees New Hampsh. Missionary Soc. 22 The stand still, or retrocessive condition of a large class of our feeble churches, has a tendency..to impart a chill of discouragement.

1904 Broad Views Aug. 158 The last twenty-five or thirty years have witnessed a singular decline in the birth rate of most civilized nations... True, a retrocessive birth rate has preceded national extinction.

1869 A. Wilmot & J. C. Chase Hist. Colony Cape of Good Hope xiv. 439 The fifth Kafir war within forty years, and..a general insurrection of cis-Keian Kafirland. Fitting legacy of the retrocessive policy of 1836!

2002 W. A. Schroeder Opening Ozarks iv. 108 After the retrocessive Treaty of San Ildefonso,..Spain issued a royal order on October 15, 1802, to turn the province over to France.