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Retardation

//ˌɹiː.tɑːˈdeɪ̯.ʃən// noun, slang

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The act of retarding or delaying; hindrance.; The distance by which one wave is behind another. countable, uncountable
  2. 2
    the act of slowing down or falling behind wordnet
  3. 3
    The act of retarding or delaying; hindrance.; The act of diminishing the rate of speed. countable, uncountable
  4. 4
    a decrease in rate of change wordnet
  5. 5
    The act of retarding or delaying; hindrance.; A decrease in the speed of telegraph signalling. countable, uncountable
Show 9 more definitions
  1. 6
    lack of normal development of intellectual capacities wordnet
  2. 7
    The extent to which anything is retarded; the result of any retarding or delay; mental, social, or physical slowness. countable, uncountable
  3. 8
    any agent that retards or delays or hinders wordnet
  4. 9
    Ellipsis of mental retardation. abbreviation, alt-of, countable, ellipsis, uncountable

    "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."

  5. 10
    the extent to which something is delayed or held back wordnet
  6. 11
    Extreme stupidity. colloquial, countable, derogatory, offensive, uncountable
  7. 12
    That which retards; an obstacle; an obstruction. countable, uncountable
  8. 13
    Deceleration; reduction in the magnitude of velocity. countable, uncountable

    "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."

  9. 14
    A suspension which resolves upwards. countable, uncountable

Etymology

From retard + -ation.

See also for "retardation"

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