Retrieve

How to spell retrieve

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce retrieve

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does retrieve mean?

1. verbTo get back or recover something that was lost, stored, or out of reach.

Retrieve in a sentence

• She ran back to retrieve her umbrella from the cafe.

• The software can retrieve files that were accidentally deleted.

Where does retrieve come from?

Language of origin: French

This word entered English in the late 1300s from Old French retroever or retruver, which meant 'to find again' or 'to recover'. That verb was built from the prefix re-, meaning 'again' or 'back', joined to trover, meaning 'to find', the same root that survives in modern French trouver. In its earliest English life retrieve was a hunting term, describing how a dog found and brought back game that had been shot or had wandered off, and that origin is why a certain breed of gun dog is still called a retriever. From the literal idea of fetching something back, the meaning broadened to recovering anything lost, and in the computer age it settled comfortably into the sense of fetching stored data. The spelling keeps the classic English -ieve ending, exactly as in 'believe' and 'achieve', and remembering that the i comes before the e here is the main trap to watch.

How the word is built

• re- (again, back)
• -trieve (from Old French trover/truver: to find)