retreated
ri-TREET-id/ɹɪˈtɹiːtɪd/
- 1Simple past and past participle of retreat.
The army retreated across the border under cover of darkness.
By dawn the troops had retreated to a defensible line of hills.
Note
One spelling does two jobs here: simple past in "the army retreated," participle in "the troops had retreated." Every verb use of retreat is intransitive, so the participle pairs with have rather than turning passive, and it covers a glacier that has shrunk back as readily as an army. Watch the homograph: the same letters can stand for re-treated, "treated again," where the hyphen keeps the meanings apart.
retreated is a form of retreat
retreat, verb: To withdraw from a position and move back. Full entry
- Forms
- retreatretreats he/she/itretreating -ing formretreated past tense, past participle
- Spelling
- retreat → retreated: add -ed
- Sound
- The ending sounds like /ɪd/, an extra syllable.
Use it in a sentence
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