1Directed or moving backward.

1. 1.1 Reverting to an earlier and inferior condition.
   to go back on the progress that has been made would be a retrograde step

   Example sentencesExamples

   • Residential school histories portray in painful detail an educationally retrograde system of regimentation and deculturalization stretching right across the country.
   • Whatever one calls the event, under the influence, first of Alfred Cobban, later of Francois Furet, the view of the Revolution as an attack of the bourgeoisie against a retrograde feudal order was demolished.
   • Closing small rural primary schools is a retrograde step, " said Deputy Ring.
   • Against those who viewed the ‘ama de casa’ as a retrograde obstacle to modernization, the Association reminded them of the social value of housewives in the regulation of the family economy and the formation of children.
   • You don't need to be a usability expert to see that this is a retrograde step.
   • Mr Ancram called the company's decision to close the post office a retrograde step.
   • The removal of car tax also proved irresistible to drivers but is seen in retrospect as a retrograde step, and, according to Brennan, ‘over the top’.
   • However, a retrograde feature is that the vehicle only has one airbag, almost uniquely on the Irish market.
   • Ned and Stacey asks the question of whether such a preposterously retrograde idea could be the basis of a comedy in the 1990s.
   • It seemed to stand for everything that was most retrograde and irrelevant.
   • Life drawing has come to be regarded as a retrograde activity that now represents an ideological divide.
   • Morgan argues that forcing organization theory into lexicons, literal language and precise formulations is a retrograde step.
   • The introduction into logic of psychological criteria of conclusiveness and truth is now often thought of as a retrograde step.
   • Would this, in the eyes of the Government, be a retrograde step?
   • In fact, throughout the strike the union refused to discuss what it believed to be the company's retrograde plan.
   • Rather, hers was a revivalism that could use indigenous culture, especially the Irish language, to expose the retrograde tendencies that persisted within Irish society.
   • That had been regarded as a retrograde move by some critics; Tchaikovsky did not fit with their taste.
   • Perhaps the model is in need of some updating, and no longer fulfils all of its original objectives, but replacing it with an even more flawed design is surely a retrograde step.
   • The song can be perceived in a feminist way - as attacking retrograde, restrictive beauty standards that obviously not a lot of women can relate to.
   • The appellant asserts that the building was uninhabitable when he moved in, and that to return it to that state would be a retrograde step.

   Synonyms

   for the worse, regressive, negative, downhill, unwelcome, unprogressive
2. 1.2 (of the order of something) reversed; inverse.
   the retrograde form of these inscriptions

   Example sentencesExamples

   • The names of Athena and Herakles are spelled the same way in each case, but both in the main field are retrograde inscriptions in contrast to the orthograde writing on the shoulder.
   • These last two devices may be combined to form a mirror canon or canon in retrograde inversion, where the second voice has the melody backwards and with the intervals inverted.
   • Also, as if Bach had splashed it against the far wall of the work, it comes back at us in retrograde; we find those ratios operating in reverse, coming toward us.
   • There is a retrograde filtration process where only certain films made east of the Bosphorous and south of the Equator actually make it back to a critiquing European audience, creating a sort of sampling bias.
   • They all demand hyper-mobility and a demonic coordination that has you switching into retrograde or performing the top half of one phrase with the bottom of another.
   • His interest in counterpoint is shown in a set of 120 canons, most of them on the ‘Miserere’ plainsong, which use such techniques as augmentation, diminution, and retrograde motion.
   • She called out for individuals to do the movement in retrograde, change direction, or otherwise alter the phrase, to create a choreographic pattern she was visualizing on the spot.
   • The most forward sections fall into line with the rest of the soldiers, who then join in the retrograde maneuver.
3. 1.3 (of amnesia) involving the period immediately preceding the causal event.
   Example sentencesExamples

   • Reports by patients of memory loss are of the erasing of autobiographical memories or retrograde amnesia.
   • However, he described the injury as ‘severe’ given the CT scan findings, the fracture and retrograde amnesia.
   • The amount of retrograde amnesia in H. M., for example, may have been grossly underestimated.
   • Keep in mind that I crashed my car and got retrograde amnesia or something.
   • ‘That's called retrograde amnesia, which is common,’ Umberto said.
4. 1.4Geology (of a metamorphic change) resulting from a decrease in temperature or pressure.
   Example sentencesExamples

   • A large pebble with a gneissose appearance is a retrograded orthogneiss, consisting of quartz, plagioclase, feldspar and muscovite, with relics of biotite, mostly chloritized, and a weakly folded tectonic foliation.
   • The stretching lineation is commonly defined by biotite and by recrystallized plagioclase in tails surrounding rotated, moderately retrograded, garnet porphyroclasts.
   • The sample was collected from a 0.5 - Im wide pegmatite pocket in a partly retrograded, undeformed part of an equigranular, medium - to coarse-grained gabbro at Lavikdal.
5. 1.5Astrology Astronomy (of the apparent motion of a planet) in a reverse direction from normal (from east to west), resulting from the relative orbital progress of the earth and the planet.
   The opposite of prograde

   Example sentencesExamples

   • The Sun's conjunction with retrograde Mercury in Cancer shows her dislike of public speaking.
   • Through a careful examination of the retrograde motion of Mercury through Cassiopeia, and the conjunction of Jupiter with Neptune, I've discovered that today is Doug's thirteen hundred and fiftieth birthday.
   • Or, look at the movement of Saturn, which turns retrograde on October 11.
   • There are dozens of less retrograde travelers in whose hoofprints we will also be journeying, for whom the pleasures of Eastern travel were not so strictly identical with the sublime egotism of Western identity formation.
   • Mercury turns retrograde, this time in the air sign of Libra, from September 14 to October 6.
6. 1.6Astronomy (of the orbit or rotation of a planet or planetary satellite) in a reverse direction from that normal in the solar system.
   Example sentencesExamples

   • All six are retrograde orbits with inclinations greater than 90 degrees.
   • Before Copernicus formulated his theory, retrograde planetary motions were just ‘facts’.
   • It has an odd, retrograde rotation so slow that one Venus day is around 250 Earth days long.
   • Just 220 km in diameter, Phoebe is in a very peculiar, retrograde orbit, and is very dark.
   • The larger impact sites have prompted speculation that collisions in Phoebe's past could have blasted off enough material to have formed Saturn's smaller retrograde moons.
   • The remaining three, however, have retrograde orbits.

A degenerate person.

1archaic Go back in position or time.

1. 1.1 Revert to an earlier and inferior condition.
   people cannot habitually trample on law and justice without retrograding toward barbarism

   Example sentencesExamples

   • One observer was heard to say that rather than depicting the progress of the past one hundred years, ‘it seemed to show we have retrograded in that time.’

   Synonyms

   revert, retrogress, relapse, lapse, backslide, go backwards, slip back, drift back, subside, sink back

2Astronomy
Show retrogradation.