beat a retreat

1. 1.

   depart hastily

   Broaderdepart

Questions about beat a retreat

What does beat a retreat mean?

beat a retreat means "depart hastily".

Is beat a retreat a common word?

beat a retreat is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.