retrograde

Until, that is, the play’s rather retrograde climax, when the playwright’s provocateur wildness goes limp.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 21, 2026

In the minds of some retrograde dweebs, representing these baddies with a woman who could play Barbie was sacrilege.

From Salon ● May 5, 2026

The dreamy vistas of domestic arts, which may have once seemed frivolous, passé, even politically retrograde for some, become a source of deep allure for people of different political stripes.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 4, 2025

Cubism was not only dominant in 1921, when Keck made his stylistically retrograde statue, but its genesis owes much to African art.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 22, 2025

As the scudding day passed overhead the dingy windows glowed and faded in ghostly retrograde.

From "The Sound and the Fury" by William Faulkner

Sometimes it is said that the high retrogrades, or backs off to the west, allowing the storm track to come down the coast.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 3, 2021

Known in our dancers’ nomenclature as “The King and Queen,” it is built primarily on one basic theme with its inversions, reversals and retrogrades.

From New York Times ● Sep. 8, 2015

He could goad the traditionalists beneath him, promote the "new thinkers," purge the retrogrades, and keep an eye out for obstructionism, sabotage, insurgency.

From Time Magazine Archive

All of the opera's other themes, accompaniments and leitmotifs are derived from endlessly ingenious extrapolations, inversions, retrogrades and other variations of the original row.

From Time Magazine Archive

From a practical, useful running machine he retrogrades into something fit only for the scrap-heap.

From Keeping Fit All the Way by Camp, Walter

Fu ture productions which fail to measure up to its stiff standards of achievement may be considered to have retrograded.

From Time Magazine Archive

Again hear the report:—'If the present state of the county of Demerara affords cause for deep apprehension, your commissioners find that Essequibo has retrograded to a still more alarming extent.

From Cotton is King, and Pro-Slavery Arguments Comprising the Writings of Hammond, Harper, Christy, Stringfellow, Hodge, Bledsoe, and Cartrwright on This Important Subject by Elliott, E. N.

The economic development in that direction has actually been retarded, and Russia, under the stress of civil war, has retrograded into a primitive village system of production and exchange.

From Dictatorship vs. Democracy (Terrorism and Communism) by Trotzky, Leon Davidovich

So well has it been managed that its business has increased rather than retrograded during the past year, as bad as it has been for all kinds of business.

From Our Artist in Cuba, Peru, Spain and Algiers Leaves from The Sketch-Book of a Traveller, 1864-1868 by Carleton, George W.

It would be interesting to know just why feminine education, after a period of efflorescence during the Thirteenth Century, retrograded during the next century.

From The Thirteenth Greatest of Centuries by Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)

“Similar retrograding blocks in the past have been associated with periods of colder and wintry weather in the Eastern U.S.,” meteorologist John Homenuk wrote on Twitter.

From Washington Post ● Nov. 29, 2022

The four boys were looking for possible routes of escape when Red’s brother decided that in arbitration lay his salvation from this swiftly retrograding dilemma.

From "The Great Santini" by Pat Conroy

If, then, we accept the biological theory of social evolution, we are forced to the conclusion that the human race, instead of advancing, is really retrograding.

From The Spirit of American Government A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And Relation To Democracy by Smith, J. Allen (James Allen)

She continued to move on, though without knowing whether she were advancing or retrograding.

From The Wanderer (Volume 4 of 5) or, Female Difficulties by Burney, Fanny

Now dreaming of universal empire, and retrograding toward the era of feudal barbarism, Napoleon attached foreign duchy after foreign duchy as fiefs to his throne.

From The Sword of Honor, volumes 1 & 2 or The Foundation of the French Republic, A Tale of The French Revolution by Sue, Eug?ne