''retard'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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Primary

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''retard'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260313192153-00-⌔

retard - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

retard (plural retards)

• A retardation; a delay.
  • ✤ Synonyms: delay, hold-up, retardation
• (music) A slowing down of the tempo; a ritardando.
• (offensive, dated) A person with mental retardation.
  • ✤ Synonyms: tard (offensive), imbecile (disused medical term), idiot (disused medical term), (legal term) moron (disused medical term)
  • ✤ The retard in our class needs special help.
• (informal, offensive) A person or being who is extremely stupid or slow to learn.
  • ✤ Synonyms: imbecile, moron, idiot; see also Thesaurus: fool, Thesaurus: idiot
  • ✤ “That’s ‘cause your dog is a retard,” the large woman retorted. The pit bull must have sensed the insult because it got up on all fours and started barking at the woman. Not one to back down from an interspecies fight, the prison lady stood up […]¹
  • ✤ College freshman Scott Damerow set a new world record by using his head to bust 142 eggs and he now officially holds a place in the Guinness Book of Fucking Retards.²

Verb

retard (third-person singular simple present retards, present participle retarding, simple past and past participle retarded)

• (transitive) To keep delaying; to continue to hinder; to prevent from progressing.
  • ✤ Synonyms: impede, hinder, hold up
  • ✤ * retard the march of an army*
  • ✤ * retard the motion of a ship*
• (transitive) To put off; to postpone.
  • ✤ to retard the attacks of old age
  • ✤ to retard a rupture between nations
• (transitive, obsolete) To be slow or dilatory to perform (something).
• (intransitive) To decelerate; to slow down.
  • ✤ 70, 60, 50, 40, 30, 20, retard, retard…³
  • ✤ This application of hydraulics led Sir George Dowty to develop the wagon retarder system, which comprised small hydraulic rams mounted inside the rail. These rams could simply retard a wagon, or both retard and ‘boost’ or speed up a wagon by hydraulic pressure.⁴
• (intransitive, obsolete) To stay back.
  • ✤ Some years it [The River Nile] hath also retarded, and come far later than usually it was expected⁵

Etymology

From Middle English retarden, from Anglo-Norman or Latin, from Anglo-Norman retarder, from Latin retardāre (“to retard”, from re- +‎ tardus (“slow”)).

Pronunciation

• (Noun (delay sense), Verb)
  • (non-rhotic)
    • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ɹɪˈtɑːd/, [ɹʷɪˈtʰɑːd]
      • Audio (UK): 🔊
  • (rhotic)
    • (General American) IPA: /ɹɪˈtɑɹd/, [ɹʷɪˈtʰɑɹd]
      • Audio (US): 🔊
• (Noun (medical term))
  • (non-rhotic)
    • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈɹiːtɑːd/, [ˈɹʷɪi̯tɑːd]
      • Audio (UK): 🔊
  • (rhotic)
    • (General American) IPA: /ˈɹiːtɑɹd/, [ˈɹʷɪi̯tʰɑɹd]
      • Audio (US): 🔊
• Rhymes: -ɑː(ɹ)d
• Hyphenation: re‧tard

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

1. 2007, Doug Green, No Wife No Kids No Plan, →ISBN: ↩

2. 2013, Norm Macdonald Live, season 1, episode 6, spoken by Norm Macdonald: ↩

3. 2019, Airbus A350 - Landing (Retard) (YouTube) ‎${}^{[2]}$, cockpit voice (actor): ↩

4. 2021 June 2, Michael Rhodes, “Tinsley reborn…”, in RAIL, number 932, pages 35–36: ↩

5. 1650, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica: […], 2nd edition, London: […] A[braham] Miller, for Edw[ard] Dod and Nath[aniel] Ekins, […], →OCLC: ↩

Link to original

Secondary

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