Retardant

adj, noun

adj, noun ·3 syllables ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Something that serves to retard (slow down) the action of something. in-compounds, often

    "It took until last year for mattresses and furniture containing the highly toxic retardant deca-BDE to be banned, under European law, from sale. […] To make matters worse, far from saving us from fires, flame retardants appear to increase the risk."

  2. 2
    any agent that retards or delays or hinders wordnet
Adjective
  1. 1
    Serving to impede (slow down) the action of something in-compounds, often

Synonyms

All synonyms
complainingdisputatiousdisputingdissentientdissentingfractious

Example

More examples

"We had fire retardant, irrigation systems. We winched staff into the area to make sure that we were doing everything we could to protect the trees, and fortunately it paid off."

Etymology

Borrowed from French retardant, equivalent to retard (“to slow down”) + -ant.

Related phrases

fire retardantfire-retardantflame retardantflame-retardant

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.