RETRO

noun and adjective (Lifestyle and Leisure) noun: A style or fashion that harks back to the past, a throw-back; a movement to revive past styles. adjective: Reviving or harking back to the past; nostalgically retrospective. Etymology: Although the prefix retro- has a long history in English, forming words with the meaning 'backwards-' on Latin roots (such as retrograde), it was actually through the French word r÷trograde that this word reached English. The French began to abbreviate r÷trograde to r÷tro specifically in relation to fashion in late 1973, when the styles of the thirties were revived by Paris designers. The abbreviation stuck in French, and it was only the abbreviated form that was borrowed into English. History and Usage: The earliest uses in English closely follow the developments of 1973-4 in France, and use the word both as a noun and as an adjective, as was already the case in French. As nostalgia in a number of cultural areas became increasingly fashionable in the eighties, both the adjective and the noun were used to form compounds such as retro-culture, retrodressing, retromania, retrophobia, and retro-rock. The icy charms of the Group TSE's productions, beginning as far back as 1969, have been in the vanguard of the French vogue for 'retro'. Guardian Weekly 18 May 1974, p. 14 Kevin was delighted...Any guy who wore a retro tux would have to be. Erica Jong Parachutes & Kisses (1984), p. 157 Rebecca is a 19-year-old Retrogirl...[She] dresses in semi-hippie garb and offsets this with a studded belt and pointed black boots. Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 27 Sept. 1988, p. 17