Etymograph

English

retirement

Retirement comes from French retirer ‘withdraw, retire’, from tirer ‘to draw, drag, pull’, and ultimately from Vulgar Latin *tīrāre.

  1. Vulgar Latinc. 100–700 CE*tīrāre1reconstructed
  2. Old Frenchc. 842–1400tirer1‘to pull’
  3. Middle Frenchc. 1400–1600tirer1‘to pull’
  4. Frenchc. 1600–presenttirer2‘to draw’
  5. Frenchc. 1600–presentretirer3‘withdraw’
  6. Frenchc. 1600–presentretirement3
  7. Englishearliest quotation 1788retirement3

attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor

  1. 1 Wiktionary, French tirer
  2. 2 Wiktionary, French retirer
  3. 3 Wiktionary, English retirement
  4. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1788, Mary Wollstonecraft: “When her mother frowned, and her friend looked cool,…”.

Lineage

  1. Vulgar Latinc. 100–700 CE*tīrāreWiktionary, French tirerreconstructed
  2. Old Frenchc. 842–1400tirerWiktionary, French tirer‘to pull’
  3. Middle Frenchc. 1400–1600tirerWiktionary, French tirer‘to pull’
  4. Frenchc. 1600–presenttirerWiktionary, French retirer‘to draw’
  5. Frenchc. 1600–presentretirerWiktionary, English retirement‘withdraw’
  6. Frenchc. 1600–presentretirementWiktionary, English retirement
  7. Englishearliest quotation 1788retirementWiktionary, English retirement. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1788, Mary Wollstonecraft: “When her mother frowned, and her friend looked cool,…”

Word family

English words that share an ancestor with retirement, grouped by the ancestor they share, most familiar first.

through Proto-Germanic *teraną ‘to tear, snatch, tug’

  • tear ← teren ← teran
  • tart ← teart ← *tartaz

through Old French tirer ‘to pull’

through French tirer ‘to draw, drag, pull’

13 more relatives in the full family tree

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Today it means

noun An act of retiring; withdrawal.

Sources

Sources: Wiktionary, “retirement”; the older steps come from the Wiktionary entries for French tirer, French retirer. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.

Etymograph / Vulgar Latin *tīrāre / retirement