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As you might guess, regress is the opposite of progress. So if a disease regresses, that's generally a good thing, but in most other ways we prefer not to regress. If someone's mental state has been improving, we hope that person won't start to regress; and when a nation's promising educational system begins to regress, that's a bad sign for the country's future. Economists often distinguish between a progressive tax and a regressive tax; in a progressive tax, the percentage that goes to taxes gets larger as the amount of money being taxed gets larger, while in a regressive tax the percentage gets smaller.
Synonyms
Examples of regress in a Sentence
India Espy-Jones, Essence, 29 Mar. 2024
Because of the shift to remote and flexible work, Gen Zers were largely spared this experience, and, rightfully, do not want to see the workforce regress.
—Lisa Conn, Forbes, 26 Feb. 2024
Being required to regress to tasks that no longer challenge or utilize our skills can be demoralizing.
—Guy Yehiav, Forbes, 22 Feb. 2024
That likely would be a quarterback following a disastrous third season by 2021 first-round pick Mac Jones, who continued to regress and was eventually benched in his first year under offensive coordinator Bill O'Brien.
—Kyle Hightower, USA TODAY, 8 Jan. 2024
Perhaps the show’s greatest surprise was that the artifice itself was moving: an infinite regress of characters confined by social scripts, from the octoroon tangled in the legal fictions of a slave society to the pigeonholed and misunderstood BJJ.
—Julian Lucas, The New Yorker, 8 Jan. 2024
His starting quarterback, Jones, who made the Pro Bowl in his rookie year, has seemed to regress with every accumulating humiliation.
—Louisa Thomas, The New Yorker, 9 Dec. 2023
This is the time when children start to severely regress and lose all their abilities.
—Theresa Vargas, Washington Post, 2 Dec. 2023
The radical rethinking required to keep us from destroying ourselves involves a kind of regress; the Chilean road to socialism, by contrast, moved only forward.
—Jonathan Dee, The New Yorker, 4 Sep. 2023
Bryce Miller, San Diego Union-Tribune, 31 Mar. 2024
On a relative basis, the Utes appear to have regressed.
—Jon Wilner, The Mercury News, 15 Mar. 2024
The state even regressed in such areas as failing to house prisoners in suicide-resistant cells when they are first placed in segregation, often including solitary confinement, in which prisoners are particularly vulnerable.
—Don Thompson, Sacramento Bee, 7 Mar. 2024
The offense this past season regressed because of injuries at wide receiver and on the offensive line.
—Joe Reedy, USA TODAY, 25 Jan. 2024
White, a transfer from USC, didn’t experience those lows from last season, but was adamant the loss didn’t mean the Cards regressed.
—The Courier-Journal, 20 Jan. 2024
After a quick start to the first quarter in which Menlo-Atherton forced seven turnovers off its press, the defense regressed in the second.
—Nathan Canilao, The Mercury News, 23 Feb. 2024
His contact management profile was relatively ordinary, though his low 15.3% liner rate allowed would seem to be largely due to random chance and could be primed to regress upward in 2024.
—Tony Blengino, Forbes, 20 Feb. 2024
But Hurts regressed this season with Johnson calling the plays.
—Rob Maaddi, USA TODAY, 23 Jan. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'regress.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near regress
Cite this Entry
“Regress.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/regress. Accessed 18 Apr. 2024.
Copy CitationMedical Definition
regress
intransitive verb
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