retreat

1. 1.

   pull back or move away or backward

   “The enemy withdrew”

   “The limo pulled away from the curb”

   Synonymswithdrawpull awaydraw backrecedepull backretiremove back

   Broadertravel

   Narrowerfall backretrogradeback up
2. 2.

   move away, as for privacy

   “The Pope retreats to Castelgondolfo every summer”

   Broadertravel

   Narrowercocoon
3. 3.

   move back

   “The glacier retrogrades”

   Synonymsretrograde

   Broaderwithdraw
4. 4.

   make a retreat from an earlier commitment or activity

   “We'll have to crawfish out from meeting with him”

   “He backed out of his earlier promise”

   “The aggressive investment company pulled in its horns”

   Synonymspull backback outback awaycrawfishcrawfish outpull in one's hornswithdraw

Other forms of retreat

plural

retreats·

past tense

retreated·

present participle

retreating·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about retreat

What does retreat mean?

retreat means "(military) withdrawal of troops to a more favorable position to escape the enemy's superior forces or after a defeat". That is the primary sense; the word has 11 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in retreat?

retreat has 2 syllables: re-treat. The stress falls on "treat". In IPA it is /ɹiˈtɹit/.

What is another word for retreat?

Close synonyms include hideaway, retirement, withdraw, pull away, draw back. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

What is the opposite of retreat?

The recorded antonyms are advance.

Is retreat a common word?

retreat is banded "Common" — everyday vocabulary in speech and writing. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.

What rhymes with retreat?

1 word rhymes with retreat. Rhymes are matched on the phonemes from the last stressed vowel onward, which is the definition a reader has in their head.