beat a retreat
verb
Simple meaning
To leave hastily in the face of opposition.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
beetuhreetreetSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈbitəɹitˈɹit
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
verb
informalidiomatic
To leave hastily in the face of opposition.
informalidiomatic
Depart hastily
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: To leave hastily in the face of opposition.
Used this way, beat a retreat is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in everyday conversation and social media or informal writing contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Casual
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Playful
- Usage feel
- Casual and conversational
Where it naturally appears
- Everyday conversation
- Social media/informal writing
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.