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To cut off; to pare away. Thy exuberant parts retrench. Denham.

The act or process of retrenching; as, the retrenchment of words in a writing. The retrenchment of my expenses will convince you that Walpole.

To lessen by retrenching, deducting, or reducing; to abate; to beat down; to lower. He must either bate the laborer's wages, or not employ or not pay him. Locke.

destruction. Every new advance of the price to the consumer is a new incentive to him to retrench the quality of his consumption. Burke.

To remove or retrench the faults or errors of; to amend; to set right; as, to correct the proof (that is, to mark upon the margin the changes to be made, or to make in the type the changes so marked).

is his natural eloquence, that he cuts doun the finest orator." Addison (c) To lessen; to retrench; to curtail; as, to cut down expenses. (d) (Naut.) To raze; as, to cut down a frigate into a sloop. -- To cut the knot or the Gordian knot, to dispose of a difficulty summarily; to solve it by prompt, arbitrary action, r…

hus to an inferior rate or glass, as a ship; hence, to prune or abridge by cutting off or retrenching parts; as, to razee a book, or an article.

ecessary or useful; pleonastic. Where an suthor is redundant, mark those paragraphs to be retrenched. I. Watts.

A kind of retrenchment, as in the body of a bastion, which may be disputed inch by inch after the defenses are dismantled. It usually consists of two faces which make a reëntering angle.

An elision or retrenchment of one or more letters or syllables from the middle of a word; as, ne'er for never, ev'ry for every.