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Retrogressive   Listen
adjective
Retrogressive  adj.  
1.
Tending to retrograde; going or moving backward; declining from a better to a worse state.
2.
(Biol.) Passing from a higher to a lower condition; declining from a more perfect state of organization; regressive.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Retrogressive" Quotes from Famous Books



... government. Their mission was to overrun other nations, and to prevent them from indulging in internecine warfare. To them mankind are therefore indebted for the preservation of whatever civilization was then extant, and for stopping the retrogressive course of the human race. This was particularly observable in their conquest of Greece and the kingdoms of Asia Minor, where incessant quarrels between rival cities and principalities had checked the progress of the arts, sciences, and literature. Content to conquer in battle, and, as the just ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen

... In politics Germany is to-day what Austria and Russia were in the days of the Holy Alliance, the power of darkness. Whilst in the provinces of science and art the German people are generally progressive, in politics the German Government is consistently retrogressive. It cannot be sufficiently emphasized and repeated that, more than any other State—more even than Russia—Prussia stands in the way of political advance. It was Prussia that helped to crush the Polish struggle for freedom in 1863; when, a few years ago, English public opinion ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea

... hereto He has looked on as a retrogressive one, And that, he ever holds, is courting woe. To counsel it was doubtless full of risk, And heaped us with responsibilities; —Yet 'twas your missive, sire, that settled it [to MURAT]. How stirred he was! "To Leipzig, or Berlin?" He kept repeating, as he drew and drew Fantastic figures on the foolscap ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... that our aggressive—by which is meant retrogressive—policy towards Russia is due to our inability to effect an entire reversal of our policy towards that country, but this is not the case at all. At any rate, as times and circumstances have changed, our policy need not be ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... a retrogressive mood, can recall the "nigger hunters" and "nigger stealers" of her childhood days. Mr. Nimrod and Mr. Shehee, both white, specialized in catching runaway slaves with their trained bloodhounds. Her parents always warned her and her brothers ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... dwelt upon to such an extent, that people are apt to overlook the fact that, side by side with these fine specimens of healthy and for the most part unintellectual manhood, we are manufacturing a purely academic article of the least inspired and most retrogressive description. ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst

... to Lord Fleetwood, Lord Wolseley, Lord Pickering, Lord Jones, Lord Desborough, Lord Viscount Lisle, and Lord Strickland, or to any two of them, "to consider of fit persons to be added for licensing of books and to report the names of such persons to the Council." This was distinctly retrogressive; and the regret of Milton must have been none the less because four of the Committee that were to find the new licensers were men he had named in his Defensio Secunda as heroes of the Commonwealth, and because, as appears from a marginal jotting to the minute ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... things," as he was taught with breathless practicality in High School, and selling them to whoever had use of such chests—possibly undertakers. Nevertheless when the progressive Moonlight Quill became the retrogressive Moonlight Quill he preferred to sink with it, and so took to letting his suits gather undisturbed the wispy burdens of the air and to throwing his socks indiscriminately into the shirt drawer, the underwear drawer, and even into no drawer ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... repository of all the accumulated nonsense of the race, and her influence upon the young brood is retrogressive and malign. It matters little what happens in the desert where men and women are necessarily animals, but it does among the middle and upper native classes of the larger places. Here the French have established their so-called ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... professor of psychology at Long Island University, postulates that hypnosis is primarily retrogressive. He has written that the organism functions differently on various levels of behavior (regression), and that the behavior breaks down into component parts. The theory that regression can spotlight personality disorders found in more infantile states is also widely held. He also ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers

... in yet other cases because they would scarcely be understood in the absence of the arguments to which they are replies. But for the convenience of any who may wish to find them, I append their titles and places of publication. These are as follows:—"Retrogressive Religion," in The Nineteenth Century for July 1884; "Last Words about Agnosticism and the Religion of Humanity," in The Nineteenth Century for November 1884; a note to Prof. Cairns' Critique on the Study of Sociology, ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... Not retrogressive, but progressive—not enervating, but energizing—not ephemeral, but substantial—not from bad to worse, but from the imperfect to the consummate, are the characteristics by which are so prominently distinguished the tidal waves ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins



Words linked to "Retrogressive" :   regressive, retrogress, retrograde



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