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Retrenchment   Listen
noun
Retrenchment  n.  
1.
The act or process of retrenching; as, the retrenchment of words in a writing.
2.
(Fort.) A work constructed within another, to prolong the defense of the position when the enemy has gained possession of the outer work; or to protect the defenders till they can retreat or obtain terms for a capitulation.
Synonyms: Lessening; curtailment; diminution; reduction; abridgment.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Retrenchment" Quotes from Famous Books



... thus ending the last segregated officer training in the armed forces. The move was unrelated to the Gillem Board Report or to the demands of civil rights advocates. The Tuskegee operation had simply become impractical. In the severe postwar retrenchment of the armed forces, Tuskegee's cadet enrollment had dropped sharply, only nine men graduated in the October 1945 class.[11-17] To the general satisfaction of the black community, the few black cadets shared both quarters and classes ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... disappointment, and, abandoning the idea of any further attack upon the point that had cost him so dearly, he ordered the troops to move round and renew the attack upon the wall in front of the Jews' quarter, and commence the construction of a battery on the edge of the great ditch facing the retrenchment behind the breach before effected. The knights of Italy and Spain determined to seize the opportunity of retrieving the disgrace that had fallen upon them. At night they descended into the deep cutting, carrying ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty

... vote in affairs of moment, has equal title to the fresh provisions or strong liquors at any time seized, and may use them at pleasure, unless a scarcity (no uncommon thing among them) make it necessary for the good of all to vote a retrenchment. ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various

... meanwhile in the country at the lavish expenditure of the king, without any apparent result in victories abroad, such as had been gained in the glorious days of his predecessor. A cry for reform and retrenchment was raised, and found a champion in the person of the Duke of Gloucester, the youngest of the king's uncles. At his instigation, the parliament which assembled on the 1st October, 1386, demanded ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe

... thus that the Court used Bacon, and that Bacon submitted to be used. He could have done, if he had been listened to, much nobler service. He had from the first seen, and urged as far as he could, the paramount necessity of retrenchment in the King's profligate expenditure. Even Buckingham had come to feel the necessity of it at last; and now that Bacon filled a seat at the Council, and that the prosecution of Suffolk and an inquiry into ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... become indispensable. The governor therefore, early in February, ordered the 'Sirius' to prepare for a voyage to China; and a farther retrenchment of our ration, we were given to understand, would take place ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench

... great importance to the country has, prevented my writing to you before. I hope you have continued well since I heard from you last, and that you do all you can to preserve that retrenchment of unnecessary expenses, and observe that attention to a prudent economy, which is no less incumbent upon ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... all chances of gaining distinction or promotion were at an end, and that they would be reduced to live on their scanty half-pay for an indefinite time. Mr. Addington indeed, who was now in power, thought only of retrenchment, and although it was evident to every thinking person that such a peace could only be of short duration, he crippled the country by paying off the greater portion of her ships-of-war; and when in May in the following year war again broke out, and Pitt returned to power, the ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty

... other folk who are not engaged in the manufacture of khaki, or rifles, or Army woollens, or heavy siege-guns (to which I had not the foresight to turn my attention before the war came along), we have found it necessary to adopt a policy of retrenchment and reform; and one of our first moves in this direction was to convert Evangeline from a daily into a half-daily. Evangeline is not a newspaper but a domestic servant, and before the new order was issued she ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various

... married the accomplished Susanne Curchod, the rejected of Gibbon, and became by her the father of Mme. de Stael; was a man of high repute for probity and business capacity; became in 1777 Director-General of Finance in France, tried hard and honestly, by borrowing and retrenchment, to restore the fallen public credit, but was after five years dismissed; was recalled in 1788, but though the funds rose, and he contributed to their relief two million livres of his own money, was again dismissed, to be once more recalled, only to expose his ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... only to the cockney abroad, who gathers here in shoals during the summer months. There is, too, a large colony of resident English, probably attracted by its nearness to London, and possibly for purposes of retrenchment, for there is no question but that the franc, of twenty per cent. less value than the shilling, accomplishes quite as much as a purchasing power. This must be quite a consideration with pater-familias with a limited income derived from Consols or ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... existed for a week in the delightful expectation of his grace being sent for again, and informed every one in confidence, that "these people could not form a cabinet." When the tocsin of peace, reform, and retrenchment sounded, she smiled bitterly; was sorry for poor Lord Grey of whom she had thought better, and gave them a year, adding with consoling malice, "that it would be another Canning affair." At length came the Reform ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... new science is full of self-knowledge—is a great liberator: if perhaps it imposes some retrenchment, essentially it revives courage. Then at last we see what we are and what we can do. The spirit can abandon its vain commitments and false pretensions, like a young man free at last to throw off his clothes and run naked along the sands. Intelligence is never ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana

... many months, then the clouds began to gather in the sky of the financial world. Business men were anxious, and retrenchment was the order of the day. Among others to draw in sail was the well-established firm whom Mr. Vincent had served for many years. The salaries of their employe's were cut down, in some instances to a mere pittance. ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston

... surgery he had been chosen to perform. All knew that he would be thorough and reasoning. All the grievous handicaps that business suffers from uncertainty of regulation, it was thought would be overcome as promptly as possible. But the pledged great change of the tariff was enough to induce retrenchment of business endeavor. With a major factor unusual in any proposition, how can stability, much less progress, be expected ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar

... you for the world. It is our policy to cherish you tenderly and protect you from all harm. Your death means nothing to us. If it did, rest assured that we would not hesitate a moment in destroying you. Think this over, Mr. Hale. When you have paid us our price, there will be need of retrenchment. Dismiss your guards now, and cut ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London

... to sum up, and the question narrowed to a direct appeal, her eyes left the clock and returned to him. Now she was listening. He pressed on to the matter of retrenchment. Would she join him, would she help to make the great work possible? At first she seemed hardly to understand; but as his meaning grew clear to her—"Is the money no ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... with Prince Eugene while giving the parole. I handed him my All-gracious Father's Letter, which much rejoiced him. After the parole, I went to see the relieving of our outposts [change of sentries there], and view the French retrenchment. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... and suffering, if the inquiry arises, How shall there be retrenchment? I answer, First and foremost retrench things needless, doubtful, and positively hurtful, as rum, tobacco, and all the meerschaums of divers colors that do accompany the same. Second, retrench all eating not necessary to health and comfort. A French family would live ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... to the upbuilding of the colony, and the home authorities in time recognized the imprudence of their policy. Hence it was that edict after edict sought to make these gentlemen of the wilderness give up whatever land they could not handle properly, and if these decrees of retrenchment had been strictly enforced most of the seigneurial estates would have been mercilessly reduced in area. But the seigneurs who were the most remiss happened to be the ones who sat at the council board in Quebec, and what they had they usually managed ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro

... And at last, when the great American Republic, in 1889, cut down the Chinese wall of protection, which so long had surrounded their country, even trade succumbed, and England was under-sold in the markets of the world. Then retrenchment was the cry; universal suffrage elected a parliament which literally cut off the royal princes with a shilling; and the Premier Bradlaugh swamped the House of Lords by the creation of a battalion of life peers, ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.

... come to the front. The second measure would be more extreme. The diplomacy of the United States should take the lead in making it clear that unless the promises about the disbanding of the army, and the introduction of general retrenchment are honestly and immediately carried out, the Powers will pursue a harsh rather than a benevolent policy toward the Peking government, insisting upon immediate payment of interest and loans as they fall due and holding up the ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey

... merely against the assault, in any form, of pinching poverty, (as would be any one in tolerably comfortable circumstances,) but even against the most trivial hint of possible want,—against all necessity of limitation or retrenchment in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... bombshell of your indignation, he merely inquires in an unagitated tone of voice which item you find fault with, and you become painfully aware that you have not a leg to stand on. In the first place, most of the items are too minute to allow of much retrenchment. You can scarcely make sweeping reductions on such charges as:- "Butons for master's trouser, 9 pies;" "Tramwei for going to market, 1 anna 6 pies;" "Grain to sparrow" (canary seed!) "1 anna 3 pies;" "Making white to master's hat, 5 pies." And when at last you find a charge big ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... retrenchment in some other matters, it is admitted. In order to find time for more washing, or money to pay others for the labor, the poor must deny themselves a few things which they now suppose, if they have ever ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott

... solitary walk. The work was difficult, and untried authorship he found almost as arduous as his journeyings. He was unaccustomed to writing; his notes were imperfect and scanty, so that he had frequently to draw upon memory; care, and correction, and retrenchment were necessary to render his work worthy of the interest which his adventures had excited; and he knew that it would be carefully sifted by each of the two contending parties, who were on the watch for information concerning the great controverted ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... as anonymous as anybody." At the door Fulkerson added: "By-the-way, the new man—the fellow that's taken my old syndicate business—will want you to keep on; but I guess he's going to try to beat you down on the price of the letters. He's going in for retrenchment. I brought along a check for this one; I'm to pay for that." He ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... you, in the most earnest and most sincere of all professions, to suffer me to make your loss as light as it is in my power to make it: I have six thousand pounds in the funds; accept all, or what part you want. Do not imagine I will be put off with a refusal. The retrenchment of my expenses, which I shall from this hour commence, will convince you that I mean to replace Your fortune as far as I can. When I thought you did not want it, I had made another disposition. You have ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... the principle of gravitation bound them to the surface of the earth. If a planter in the West Indies found himself reduced in his profits, he did not usually dispose of any part of his slaves; and his own gratifications were never given up, so long as there was a possibility of making any retrenchment in the allowance of his slaves.—But to return to the subject which he had left: he was happy to state, that as all the causes of the decrease which he had stated might be remedied, so, by the progress of light and reformation, these remedies had been gradually ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... of it. My mother was very angry, even in her grief, when I proposed it. They hope that by strict retrenchment, the property will be itself again; and they spoke about Tommy. They said it would ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... We were still in Italy when I made my first discovery; it was one that let in the light upon his character, but did not seriously involve my wife. We fought, and I was wounded. When I recovered, I brought my wife home to Arden. Our year's retrenchment had left me poorer than when I left home. Your mother's beauty was a luxury not to be maintained more cheaply ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... shilling each member it looked like "Rogersis'" bill for "licker" going up, but if for all the members together it {35} was decided retrenchment as well as reform. Among others who were parties to the agreement, but not in the first committee, were:—John Cross, John Warren, John Hankin, John Trudgett—what a lot of Johns they had in those old days!—Peter Beldam, Robt. Leete and Danl. Lewer. The new Local Parliament had ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston

... himself pointed out the general principles of the reform he calculated upon establishing. "It is impossible," he said, "to meddle with the expenses necessary for the preservation of the state; it were a crime to think of such a thing. The retrenchment, therefore, must be in the case of useless expenses. The most stringent rules are and appear to be, even to the most ill-regulated minds, comparatively mild, when they have, in deed as well as in appearance, no object but ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot



Words linked to "Retrenchment" :   retrench, curtailment, downsizing, entrenchment



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