Word.ws English Dictionary

retarding

retarding is the present participle and gerund of retard.

Meaning of retard

Verb

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

  1. (transitive) To keep delaying; to continue to hinder; to prevent from progressing.
    • retard the march of an army
  2. (transitive) To put off; to postpone.
    • to retard the attacks of old age
    Synonyms:
    postpone
  3. (obsolete, transitive) To be slow or dilatory to perform (something).
  4. (intransitive) To decelerate; to slow down.
    • 70, 60, 50, 40, 30, 20, retard, retard...2019, Airbus A350 - Landing (Retard) (YouTube), cockpit voice (actor)
  5. (intransitive, obsolete) To stay back.
    • Some years it [The River Nile] hath also retarded, and come far later than usually it was expected1650, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica: […], 2nd edition, London: […] A[braham] Miller, for Edw[ard] Dod and Nath[aniel] Ekins, […], →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    hang back

See all 9 meanings of retard

Noun

retarding (plural retardings)

  1. A slowing or hindrance.
    • It resembled them in the sense that it was not ended, when it was past, but continued to unfold, in Watt's head, from beginning to end, over and over again, the complex connexions of its lights and shadows, the passing from silence to sound and from sound to silence, the stillness before the...1953, Samuel Beckett, Watt, [Paris]: Olympia Press, →OCLC

Synonyms of retarding

Forms of retarding

pluralretardings

Words formed from retarding

Phrases with retarding

Questions about retarding

What does retarding mean?
Retarding means a slowing or hindrance.
What is retarding the present participle and gerund of?
Retarding is the present participle and gerund of retard.
What part of speech is retarding?
Retarding is a noun.
What is the plural of retarding?
The plural of retarding is retardings.

Words near retarding in the dictionary

  1. retardest
  2. retardeth
  3. retardical
  4. retardican
  5. retardicans
  6. retarding
  7. retarding basin
  8. retarding basins
  9. retardingly
  10. retardings
  11. retardism

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: retarding (page history and authors); retard (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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Cite this entry: “retarding.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/retarding. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.