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retreating

retreating is the present participle and gerund of retreat.

Meaning of retreat

Verb

retreat (third-person singular simple present retreats, present participle retreating, simple past and past participle retreated)

(intransitive) To withdraw from a position, go back.
1. (intransitive) To withdraw military forces.
  - The general refused to order his soldiers to retreat, despite being vastly outnumbered.
(intransitive) To shrink back due to generally warmer temperatures. (of a glacier)
(intransitive) To slope back.
- a retreating forehead

See all 16 meanings of retreat

Noun

retreating (plural retreatings)

The act of moving back from something; a retreat.
- But of the marchings and retreatings of these Six-thousand no Xenophon exists. Nothing, but an inarticulate hum, of cursing and sooty frenzy, surviving dubious in the memory of ages!1837, Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution: A History […], volume III (The Guillotine), London: James Fraser, […], →OCLC, book V (Terror the Order of the Day), page 319

Forms of retreating

plural	retreatings

Questions about retreating

What does retreating mean?: Retreating means the act of moving back from something; a retreat.
What is retreating the present participle and gerund of?: Retreating is the present participle and gerund of retreat.
What part of speech is retreating?: Retreating is a noun.
What is the plural of retreating?: The plural of retreating is retreatings.

Words near retreating in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: retreating (page history and authors); retreat (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “retreating.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/retreating. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.