*20 RET 
Retirement; place of privacy. Not in use. 
Eve, who unseen 
Yet all had heard, with audible lament 
Discover’d soon tire place of her retire. Milton. 
RETI'RED, part. adj. Secret; private. — Language 
most shews a man ; speak that I may see thee: it springs out 
of the most retired and inmost parts of us. B. Jonson .— 
Some, accustomed to retired speculations, run natural philo¬ 
sophy into metaphysical notions and the abstract generali¬ 
ties of logic. Locke. —Withdrawn.—You find the mind 
in sleep retired from the senses, and out of these motions 
made on the organs of sense. Locke. 
RETIRED LIST, a list on the marine establishment, on 
which superanuated officers are placed. 
RETI'REDLY, adv. In solitude; in privacy. Sherwood. 
RETI'REDNESS, s. Solitude; privacy; secrecy.—If 
retiredness be not more delicious than affluence or popu¬ 
larity, how comes it that men of great employment do so 
often lock up themselves from the crowd and flux of affairs ? 
As the happiest part of their lives, they steal themselves into 
a calm. Feltham. 
RETI'REMENT, s. Private abode; secret habitation.— 
Caprea had been the retirement of Augustus for some time, 
and the residence of Tiberius for many years. Addison. — 
Private way of life. 
An elegant sufficiency, content, 
Retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books, 
Progressive virtue, and approving heaven. Thomson. 
Act of withdrawing.—Short retirement urges sweet return. 
Milton. —State of being withdrawn.—In this retirement of 
the mind from the senses, it retains a yet more incoherent 
manner of thinking, which we call dreaming. Locke. 
RETO'LD, part. pass, of retell. Related or told again. 
Whatever Harry Percy then hath said 
At such a time, with all the rest retold. 
May reasonably die. Shakspeare. 
RETORBIO, a small town of the Continental Sardinian 
states, remarkable for its warm springs; 17 miles south¬ 
west of Pavia. 
To RETO'RT, v. a. [retortus, Lab] To throw back; 
to rebound. 
The loadstone, which the wary mariner 
Doth as directer of his travels bear 
Now to the rising sun, now to the set. 
Doth never lose that hidden virtue yet. 
Which makes it to the north retort its look. Fanshaw. 
To return any argument, censure, or incivility. 
He pass’d through hostile scorn ; 
And with retorted scorn his back he turn’d. Milton. 
To curve back.~~It would be tried how the voice would 
be carried in a horn, which is a line arched; or in a trum¬ 
pet, which is a line retorted; or in some pipe that were 
sinuous. Bacon.' 
RETO'RT, s. [retortum, Lat.] A censure or incivility 
returned.—I said his beard was not cut well, he was in the 
mind it was : this is called the retort courteous. Shak¬ 
speare. —A chemical glass vessel with a bent neck to which 
the receiver is fitted.—In a laboratory, where the quicksilver 
is separated by fire, I saw an heap of sixteen thousand retorts 
of iron, every one of which costs a crown at the best hand 
from the iron furnaces in Corinthia. Brown. —See 
Chemistry, p. 191. 
To what is there written we may add, that Dr. Browne 
Langrish has given us a new contrivance of applying re¬ 
ceivers to retorts, by which accidents from the bursting of 
retorts may be prevented. To his first receiver he adapts a 
second, inserted into an opening at the top of the first, in 
order to give more room to the rarefied and new generated 
air. To an opening at the bottom of each of these 
receivers, he fixes a bottle, tied on close by means of a 
bladder, so that they may be removed at anytime, and 
RET 
another instantly placed in their room; by which means’ 
very little of the steam will escape. He also ties on s- 
bladder to an opening, or upper neck of the second 
recipient; and this bladder being much thinner and weaken 
than any of the glasses, will always give way first, and pre¬ 
vent their bursting. And even when there is the greatest 
danger of this accident, the smallest pin-hole made through 
the top of the bladder, as soon as the fumes begin to rise, 
will be sufficient-to let out the air as fast as it is generated. 
See Philos. Transact. N°. 475. 
RETO'RTER, s. One that retorts. 
RETO'RTING, s. Act of casting back, in the way of 
censure or incivility.—As for those little retortings of my 
own expressions, “ of being dull by design, witty in Octo¬ 
ber, shining, excelling,” and so forth; they are the com¬ 
mon cavils of every witling, who has no other methods of 
shewing his parts, but by little variations and repetitions of 
the man’s word whom he attacks. Tatler. 
RETO'RTION, s. The act of retorting.—Complaints and 
retortions are the common refuge of causes that want better 
arguments. Lively Oracles. 
To RETO'SS, v. a. To toss back.—Tost and retost the 
ball incessant flies. Pope. 
To RETOU'CH, v. a. [retoucher, Fr.] To improve by 
new touches.—He furnished me with all the passages in Aris¬ 
totle and Horace, used to explain the art of poetry by paint¬ 
ing; which, if ever I retouch this essay, shall be inserted. 
Dry den. 
RETPOORAH, a town of Hindostan, province of Berar, 
belonging to the Nizam. Lat. 21. 19. N. long. 78. 21. E. 
To RETRA'CE, v. a. [retracer, Fr.] To trace back; to 
trace again. 
Then if the line of Tumus you retrace. 
He springs from Inachus of Argive race. Dry den. 
To RETRA'CT, v. a. [retractus, Lat.] To recall; to 
recant. 
Were I alone to pass, the difficulties, 
Paris should ne’er retract what he hath done. 
Nor faint in the pursuit. Shakspeare. 
To take back ; to resume.—A great part of that time, 
which the inhabitants of the former earth had to spare, and 
whereof they made so ill use, was employed in making pro¬ 
vision for bread; and the excess of fertility which contri¬ 
buted so much to their miscarriages, was retracted and cut 
off. Woodward. 
To RETRA'CT, v. n. To unsay; to withdraw conces¬ 
sion. 
She will, and she will not, she grants, denies. 
Consents, retracts, advances, and then flies. Glanville. 
RETRACT, an old technic among horsemen, for pricks 
in a horse’s feet, arising from the fault of the farrier in driv¬ 
ing the nails amiss. 
To RETRA'CTATE, v. a. [retractatus, Lat.] To re¬ 
cant ; to unsay.—St. Augustine was not ashamed to retrac¬ 
tate, we might say revoke, many things that had passed 
him; and doth even glory that he seeth his infirmities. 
Translators of the Bible to the Reader. 
RETRACTA'TION, s. [rctractatio, Lat.] Recantation; 
change of opinion declared.—Culpable beginnings have 
found commendable conclusions, and infamous courses pious 
retractations. Brown . » 
RETRA'CTION, s'. Act of withdrawing something ad¬ 
vanced, or changing something done—They make bold with 
the Deity when they make him do and undo, go forward and 
backwards by such countermarches and retractions, as we 
do not impute to the Almighty. Woodward. —Recantation; 
declaration of change of opinion.—'There came into her head 
certain verses, which if she had had present commodity, she 
would have joined as a retraction to the other. Sidney .— 
Act of withdrawing a claim.—Other men’s insatiable desire 
of revenge hath wholly beguiled both church and state, of 
the benefit of all my either retractions or concessions. 
King Charles. 
RETRA'CTIVE, 
