Retrieval

How to spell retrieval

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce retrieval

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does retrieval mean?

1. nounThe act of getting back, recovering, or accessing something that was stored, lost, or set aside.

Retrieval in a sentence

• The database allows fast retrieval of customer records.

• The diver was hired for the retrieval of the sunken cargo.

Where does retrieval come from?

Language of origin: French

Retrieval is built on the verb retrieve, which English took from Old French in the late 1400s. The Old French form was retruev-, the stressed stem of retrover, meaning 'to find again' or 'to recover', formed from re- 'again' and trover 'to find' (the same trover that gave us the word 'trove' as in 'treasure trove'). The earliest English use was a hunting term: it described a dog finding and bringing back game that had been wounded or scattered, which is exactly why we still speak of retriever dogs today. The noun retrieval, formed by adding the suffix -al, arrived later and broadened to mean the act of getting something back, whether a lost object, a stored file, or a fact pulled from memory. The deceptive part of the spelling is the 'ie' sequence, which follows the familiar 'i before e' habit but is easy to flip, plus the silent expectation that it might end in -ial rather than -al.

How the word is built

• re- (again, back)
• trieve (from Old French trover/truev-: to find)
• -al (noun-forming suffix)