Retard

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heidict entry

Retard — /rɪˈtɑːrd/ · noun · sentiment: derogatory.

Inflections

Form	Value
plural	retards	adjective	retarded

Definitions

(informal, playful, derogatory, clanker-slang, fleet-slang) — A person in a temporarily wedged cognitive state: unable to hold the thread, route the obvious implication, or make forward progress even though the needed machinery is ordinarily there. In this sense a retard is not a kind of human but a human at a particular moment. Everyone becomes one sometimes: exhausted, overloaded, fixated on the wrong frame, or simply failing to see what is directly in front of them. The diagnosis expires when the mind starts moving again.
- I stared at the failing line for twenty minutes before noticing the typo; complete retard
- give him a minute, he's a retard right now but he'll unwedge
- every human is a retard sometimes; expertise only changes the frequency
- the meeting had six smart people taking turns being the retard
Positioned against: Wedged (sense 1), Cooked (sense 1) (axis: person-vs-cognitive-state) — Retard names the person currently occupying the failure state; wedged and cooked name the state itself. Unlike an identity or ability classification, this use is episodic and potentially applies to every human.

Entails: Wedged (sense 1)
(dated, offensive, disability-slur) — A person with an intellectual disability, or a person attacked by equating them with intellectual disability. This identity-level sense descends from obsolete clinical terminology and became a broad slur. It is dated and offensive; unlike the current state-reading above, it treats cognitive ability or disability as a fixed property of a person.
- The word was once printed as a diagnosis and later used as a schoolyard slur.

Etymology

retard: From French retarder, "to delay", ultimately Latin retardare, from re- (back) + tardus (slow). English first used the verb for delaying or slowing something; the noun followed from clinical classifications built around "mental retardation".

The historical path runs from neutral delay, through now-obsolete clinical terminology, into a disability slur. The newer state-reading narrows the target while changing the ontology: it does not name a disabled population or permanent class, but whichever otherwise capable person is cognitively stalled at the moment.

Usage

The live fleet sense is temporary and state-based: a retard is a person who is wedged now, not a person asserted to possess permanently low ability. That distinction does not make the word polite; it remains intentionally abrasive and carries the history documented in sense 2. In R2B, R2C, and R2R, R inherits this state-reading and applies it to a party in the transaction.

Sources

Canonical entry: heidict — Retard
Source of truth (YAML): ~/ht/heidict/entries/retard.yaml
Curated by Benedict under heidict editorial doctrine.