Meaning & use

regress

verb·Advanced

To return to an earlier, less developed stage or condition after having made progress.

See it in a sentence

Without practice, his French skills began to regress within a few months.

The patient seemed to regress after stopping the therapy sessions.

A note on using this word

Regress implies a decline back toward an earlier state, and is also a statistical term for analyzing relationships between variables.

Words with a similar meaning

revertrelapsebackslide

Choose a synonym to suit the sentence. Meanings can overlap without being identical.

Words with an opposite meaning

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