Retro

How to spell retro

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce retro

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does retro mean?

1. adjectiveImitating or revisiting the styles, fashions, or design of the recent past.
2. nounA style or trend that revives features of the recent past.

Retro in a sentence

• adjective

  The cafe had a deliberately retro look, with chrome stools and neon signs.

• noun

  The whole collection leans into retro, borrowing heavily from vintage adverts.

• adjective

  She furnished the flat in a retro style inspired by the 1970s.

• noun

  Designers keep returning to retro because nostalgia sells well.

Where does retro come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Retro comes straight from the Latin adverb and prefix retro, which literally meant 'backward' or 'behind', the opposite direction of forward motion. In Latin it appeared inside words such as retrogradus 'stepping backward' and retrospicere 'to look back', and English long used it only as a bound prefix in formal borrowings like retrograde, retrospect, and retroactive. The independent modern word emerged in the twentieth century, first in French as a clipping of words such as retrograde and retrospectif, then crossing into English in the 1960s and 1970s. From there it settled into its current sense of consciously imitating the styles, fashions, and design of an earlier era. Because it is a tidy clipped form, the spelling is short and phonetic, with the only mild trap being the single internal -t- and the final -o rather than -oh.

How the word is built

• retro- (Latin retro: backward, behind), used as a standalone clipping