Retire

How to spell retire

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce retire

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does retire mean?

1. verbTo stop working permanently, usually on reaching a certain age.
2. verbTo go away to a quieter or more private place, especially to bed or to rest.
3. verbTo withdraw from a game, race, or competition before it ends, often because of injury.

Retire in a sentence

• He plans to retire at sixty and travel widely.

• The guests began to retire to their rooms after the long dinner.

• The cyclist had to retire from the race with a torn muscle.

• Many teachers choose to retire once their pension matures.

• She liked to retire early and read before sleeping.

• The batsman was forced to retire hurt after the blow to his hand.

Where does retire come from?

Language of origin: French

Retire entered English in the 1500s from the French verb retirer, which combines the prefix re-, meaning 'back', with the verb tirer, meaning 'to draw' or 'to pull'. The literal sense was therefore 'to draw oneself back', and the earliest English uses described an army withdrawing or a person pulling away from a place or situation. From that idea of withdrawing came the gentler senses of retreating to bed for the night and of stepping back from public or working life. The 'stop working at the end of a career' meaning, now the most common, grew steadily through the 1600s and 1700s as the notion of a settled withdrawal from employment took hold. Because the spelling preserves the French tirer rather than any English root, the silent flow of the vowels is the main thing to watch, but the word is otherwise regular.

How the word is built

• re- (back)
• tire (from French tirer: to draw, pull)