Other forms: retired, retiring, retires
To retire is to stop working for good, at the age when you are allowed to. The leaving do, the card everybody signed, the last set of keys handed back — and then Monday mornings that belong to you.
In this sense retire takes no object: you retire, you retire from teaching, you retire at sixty-five. The adjective is retired, as in a retired nurse, and the noun is retirement — you take retirement, go into retirement, or come out of it again. The older meaning is simply to withdraw, and it is still alive: guests retire to the drawing room, an army retires to a stronger position, and in older novels people retire for the night, which means they go to bed. Sport keeps its own version, where an injured player retires hurt in the second round. Do not use it for walking out of a job you hate at thirty — that is resign.
1verbretireTo stop working permanently at the end of a working life.
“She retires in March after forty years at the same school.”
2verbplaceTo go away from a place, especially to somewhere quieter.
“They retired to the garden with their coffee.”
3verbwithdrawTo withdraw from a race or match, especially because of injury.
“He retired in the second round with a knee injury.”
4verbtakeTo take something out of use for good.
“The club retired his shirt number the season after he left.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Retire came from Middle French retirer, to draw back: re- (back) plus tirer (to draw or pull), a verb from Vulgar Latin whose own origin nobody has managed to pin down. The first sense was withdrawal of any kind — stepping back from a room, a battle, a crowd. Stopping work is the last of those retreats and now much the loudest.
Vulgar Latin
*tīrāre
Old French
retirer
Middle French
retirer — draw back
English, today
retire
Built from
From Middle French retirer (“draw back”), from Old French retirer, built from re- (“back”) + tirer (“draw, pull”), the latter from Vulgar Latin tīrāre, of highly uncertain origin.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA