Word.ws English Dictionary

irretrievably

irretrievably adverb: in an irretrievable manner; irrecoverably.

Adverb

irretrievably (comparative more irretrievably, superlative most irretrievably)

  1. In an irretrievable manner; irrecoverably.
    • Old English seems, and remains, irretrievably distant[.]1985, Robert Burchfield, The English Language, Oxford: Oxford University Press, page 17
    • Such comments needlessly and irretrievably polarize the collective and its neighbors.1986 February 15, John Cronin, “More To It Than Homophobia”, in Gay Community News, volume 13, number 31, page 5

Forms of irretrievably

comparativemore irretrievably
superlativemost irretrievably

Origin of irretrievably

From irretrievable + -ly.

Questions about irretrievably

What does irretrievably mean?
Irretrievably means in an irretrievable manner; irrecoverably.
What part of speech is irretrievably?
Irretrievably is an adverb.

Words near irretrievably in the dictionary

  1. irretractable
  2. irretractile
  3. irretrievability
  4. irretrievable
  5. irretrievableness
  6. irretrievably
  7. irreturnable
  8. irrevealable
  9. irreverence
  10. irreverences
  11. irreverencies

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: irretrievably (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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