Regression

How to spell regression

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce regression

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does regression mean?

1. nounA return to a former, usually less developed or less desirable, condition.
2. nounA statistical method for estimating the relationship between a dependent variable and one or more predictors.

Regression in a sentence

• The patient showed a worrying regression after weeks of steady recovery.

• The analyst ran a regression to predict sales from advertising spend.

• The report blamed the country's economic regression on falling exports.

• A simple linear regression fitted a straight line through the data points.

Where does regression come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin regressio, meaning 'a going back' or 'a return', which was built on the verb regredi, 'to step back' or 'to go back'. That verb combined re-, meaning 'back', with gradi, meaning 'to step' or 'to walk', whose past participle stem gressus supplies the double 's' that learners must remember. The very same gradi root sits inside everyday relatives like 'progress' (a stepping forward), 'congress' (a coming together) and 'digress' (a stepping aside). English adopted regression in the early 1600s, at first simply for the act of returning or moving backwards. Over time it gathered specialist meanings: psychologists use it for a return to an earlier stage of behaviour, and statisticians use it for a method that traces how one variable depends on others, a sense coined in the nineteenth century by Francis Galton.

How the word is built

• re- (back)
• gress (from Latin gradi/gressus: to step, to walk)
• -ion (noun-forming suffix)