Adjacent Words

Regressive definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

REGRESS'IVE, a. Passing back; returning.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: (of taxes) adjusted so that the rate decreases as the amount of income increases [ant: progressive]
2: opposing progress; returning to a former less advanced state [ant: progressive]

Merriam Webster's

adjective Date: 1634 1. tending to regress or produce regression 2. being, characterized by, or developing in the course of an evolutionary process involving increasing simplification of bodily structure 3. decreasing in rate as the base increases <a regressive tax> • regressively adverb • regressiveness noun • regressivity noun

Oxford Reference Dictionary

adj. 1 regressing; characterized by regression. 2 (of a tax) proportionally greater on lower incomes. Derivatives: regressively adv. regressiveness n.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Regressive Re*gress"ive (r?*gr?s"?v), a. [Cf. F. r['e]gressif.] 1. Passing back; returning. 2. Characterized by retrogression; retrogressive. Regressive metamorphism. (a) (Biol.) See Retrogression. (b) (Physiol.) See Katabolism.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

Regressive behaviour, activities, or processes involve a return to an earlier and less advanced stage of development. (FORMAL) This regressive behaviour is more common in boys. ADJ

Moby Thesaurus

apostate, ascending, atavistic, axial, back, back-flowing, backsliding, backward, coming apart, cracking, crumbling, decadent, declining, degenerate, descending, deteriorating, disintegrating, down-trending, downward, draining, drifting, drooping, dwindling, ebbing, effete, fading, failing, falling, flagging, flowing, fluent, flying, fragmenting, going, going to pieces, gyrational, gyratory, languishing, lapsing, marcescent, mounting, passing, pining, plunging, progressive, reactionary, recessive, recidivist, recidivous, recrudescent, reflowing, refluent, relapsing, retroactive, retrocessive, retrograde, retrogressive, retrorse, retroverse, returnable, reversible, reversional, reversionary, revertible, revulsionary, rising, rotary, rotational, rotatory, running, rushing, shriveling, sideward, sinking, sliding, slipping, slumping, soaring, streaming, subsiding, tabetic, up-trending, upward, waning, wasting, wilting, withering, worsening