Meaning

The act of retarding or delaying; hindrance..

Definitions by Sense

1. The act of retarding or delaying; hindrance.
2. The extent to which anything is retarded; the result of any retarding or delay; mental, social, or physical slowness.
3. (psychology) Ellipsis of mental retardation.
4. (colloquial, derogatory, offensive) Extreme stupidity.
5. That which retards; an obstacle; an obstruction.
6. (physics) Deceleration; reduction in the magnitude of velocity.
7. (music) A suspension which resolves upwards.

Example Sentences

Me and my friends used to feed LSD to this little retarded girl in our neighborhood and we'd lock arms around her and go "nightmare! Nightmare! Nightmare! Nightmare! Nightmare! Nightmare! Nightmare! Nightmare!" It actually cured her retardation.

It was on the first day of the new year that the announcement was made, almost simultaneously from three observatories, that the motion of the planet Neptune, the outermost of all the planets that wheel about the sun, had become very erratic. Ogilvy had already called attention to a suspected retardation in its velocity in December. Such a piece of news was scarcely calculated to interest a world the greater portion of whose inhabitants were unaware of the existence of the planet Neptune, nor outside the astronomical profession did the subsequent discovery of a faint remote speck of light in the region of the perturbed planet cause any very great excitement. Scientific people, however, found the intelligence remarkable enough, even before it became known that the new body was rapidly growing larger and brighter, that its motion was quite different from the orderly progress of the planets, and that the deflection of Neptune and its satellite was becoming now of an unprecedented kind.

[...] the effect is automatically to select a braking force which is higher at above 40 m.p.h., in the initial stages of retardation, but is reduced as the speed falls below 40 m.p.h.

Word Forms

• retardations

Synonyms for retardation

Antonyms for retardation

Related Words

When Should You Use Retardation?

Use retardation when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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