regressive
Americanadjective
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regressing or tending to regress; retrogressive.
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Biology. of, relating to, or effecting regression.
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(of tax) decreasing proportionately with an increase in the tax base.
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Logic. obtained from or characterized by backward reasoning.
adjective
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regressing or tending to regress
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(of a tax or tax system) levied or graduated so that the rate decreases as the amount taxed increases See progressive
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of, relating to, or characteristic of regression
Other Word Forms
- nonregressive adjective
- nonregressively adverb
- regressively adverb
- regressiveness noun
- regressivity noun
- unregressive adjective
- unregressively adverb
- unregressiveness noun
Etymology
Origin of regressive
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Captive in bucolic panopticons, their lives are at once aesthetically alluring, depressingly regressive and anthropologically fascinating.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 7, 2026
The draft law reduces severance pay, allows payments in kind and restricts vacation usage, among other proposals that the General Confederation of Labor considers "regressive."
From Barron's • Feb. 11, 2026
Although the manosphere content often cited by media and scholars is not necessarily racially regressive, it is distinctly gender regressive, and that appears to be taking a toll on Gen Z.
From Slate • Jan. 6, 2026
It highlighted societal changes in Saudi Arabia that allowed edgy American comedians to perform in a country long dismissed as irredeemably puritanical and regressive.
From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 23, 2025
Progressive thinking is therefore adaptive, while regressive thinking is fantastic in type, as well as concerned with the past—a past which in fancy takes on the luster of the Golden Age.
From Benign Stupors A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type by MacCurdy, John T. (John Thompson)
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
