Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The degeneration of faculties in Alzheimer's disease in the reverse order of that in which they were developed as a child.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

retro- +‎ genesis, coined by Dr. Barry Reisburg.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word retrogenesis.

Examples

  • It was her form of lyric verse, subjective and unrhymed, a little songlike but with a rigor, a tradition of fixed order, only backwards, to test the presence of another kind of reversal, which a doctor nicely named retrogenesis.

    Falling Man Don DeLillo 2007

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • retrogenesis – the loss of mental abilities in old age in the opposite order in which they are gained in childhood, esp. as exhibited by Alzheimer's patients

    July 26, 2008