Word.ws English Dictionary

retrotort

retrotort verb: to undergo retrotorsion.

Verb

retrotort (third-person singular simple present retrotorts, present participle retrotorting, simple past and past participle retrotorted)

  1. (intransitive) To undergo retrotorsion.
  2. (formal, rare, transitive) To twist backward.
    • But Greek and Latin are quite unequal, when disjoined from the elder wheels in our etymological system, to the working of the total machinery of the English language. Mr. Landor proceeds upon no fixed principles in his changes. Sometimes it is on the principle of internal analogy within itself...1861, Thomas De Quincey, Writings, volume 3, page 250

Noun

retrotort (plural retrotorts)

  1. (neologism) A witty remark that one thinks of when it is too late.

Forms of retrotort

Verb
third-person singular presentretrotorts
present participleretrotorting
past participleretrotorted
pastretrotorted
Noun
pluralretrotorts

Origin of retrotort

Blend of retro- + retort, coined by Bernard Cooper.

Questions about retrotort

What does retrotort mean?
Retrotort means to undergo retrotorsion.
What part of speech is retrotort?
Retrotort can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of retrotort?
The past tense of retrotort is retrotorted.

Words near retrotort in the dictionary

  1. retrosynthetically
  2. retrotarsal
  3. retrotopia
  4. retrotopias
  5. retrotorsion
  6. retrotort
  7. retrotorted
  8. retrotorting
  9. retrotorts
  10. retrotracheal
  11. retrotragal

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: retrotort (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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