Retrenchment

Quick meaning: Retrenchment is a noun meaning A curtailment or reduction.

Meaning

A curtailment or reduction.

More Meanings

1. (by extension) Withdrawal.
2. (especially politics) The adoption of a defensive and hostile posture; refusal to compromise, radicalization.
3. (military, dated) A defensive work constructed within a fortification to make it more defensible by allowing defenders to retreat into and fight from it even after the enemy has taken the outer work.

Example Sentences

And the retrenchment of services such as mental health and drug rehabilitation means that vulnerable people are more likely to find themselves on the street.

It agrees that redundant services should not be continued but is not unmindful of the fact that too much retrenchment of rail services now may ultimately prove detrimental to the economy of the country.

Given the current retrenchment of liberal internationalism, it is easy to forget that only three decades ago many believed that liberalism had attained a historically definitive victory over all alternatives.

If it is allowed, however, that the theatre of cosmic evolution is endowed with some fixed structure, even a very weak one, then there is a retrenchment from the programme of an evolutionary account of every general law.

Word Forms

• retrenchments

Synonyms for retrenchment

Depending on context, synonyms include diminution, lessening, downsizing, curtailment.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include downsizing, curtailment, cost-cutting, layoff, reduction, suppression.

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