Meaning & use
regress
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Meanings
verbintransitive
To slip back to an earlier, less advanced state or way of behaving after having improved.
Grammar: No object; often followed by to: the patient regressed to childlike habits.
Patterns
- regress to something
- regress into something
After the move, the toddler regressed and started asking for a bottle again.
Under stress, even calm adults can regress to the habits of their teenage years.
The team's play regressed badly once the star striker was injured.
verbtransitivetechnicalmathematics
In statistics, to measure how strongly one variable depends on others by fitting a line or curve to the data.
Grammar: Takes an object, usually with on: regress sales on advertising spend.
Patterns
- regress something on something
- regress something against something
The analyst regressed house prices on floor area and location.
We regressed test scores against hours of sleep to look for a pattern.
Before you regress the data, check that the outliers are genuine.
Word forms
| third person singular | regresses |
|---|---|
| past tense | regressed |
| past participle | regressed |
| -ing form | regressing |
Common combinations
- regress to childhood
- Some patients regress to childhood behavior during long illnesses.
- regress sharply
- Her reading skills regressed sharply over the summer break.
- begin to regress
- The economy began to regress after the factory closed.
- regress on a variable
- The study regresses income on years of schooling.
- regress into old habits
- He regressed into old habits within a week of leaving the program.
Synonyms and how they differ
- revert
- Revert stresses going back to a previous state or topic, without necessarily implying that the earlier state was worse.
- relapse
- Relapse is used mainly for illness or bad habits that return after a period of improvement, so it is narrower than regress.
- backslide
- Backslide is informal and usually points to moral or behavioral lapses, such as giving up a good routine.
- deteriorate
- Deteriorate means getting steadily worse, but it does not require going back to an earlier stage as regress does.
Opposites
Word family
- regression noun
- the act of going back to an earlier state, or the statistical method
- regressive adjective
- tending to go backward, or (of a tax) taking a bigger share from low earners
- regressively adverb
- in a way that moves backward
- progress verb
- to move forward, the opposite direction
Commonly confused: regress or digress? regress or progress?
regress vs digress
Digress means to wander away from the main topic while speaking or writing; regress means to go back to an earlier state.
regress vs progress
Progress is forward movement or improvement, the direct opposite of regress.
Practice
After months of dry nights, the child began to ___ and wet the bed again during the stressful move.
Choose one answer.
Regress means to slip back to an earlier stage, which fits a child returning to old behavior. Digress is about leaving a topic when talking, so it is tempting but wrong here.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “regress”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.