What It Means
Retrospective describes something that relates to the past or to something that happened in the past.
The museum has curated a retrospective exhibit of the artist’s early works.
Retrospective in Context
“Our retrospective sense of time hinges on memory: Periods rich in novel, significant experiences feel longer, while routine collapses duration …” — Marc Wittmann, Psychology Today, 16 Nov. 2025
Did You Know?
At the year’s end, both introspection and retrospection are common. While introspection involves looking inward and taking stock of oneself, retrospection is all about recollecting and contemplating things that happened in the past. A look back at the history of the related adjective retrospective reveals that it retains a strong connection to its past: its Latin source is retrospicere, meaning “to look back at.” Retrospective can also be used as a noun referring to an exhibition that “looks back” at an artist’s work created over a span of years. Once you have retrospective and retrospection behind you, you can also add their kin retrospect (most familiar in the phrase in retrospect to describe thinking about the past or something that happened in the past) and retro (usually meaning “fashionably nostalgic or old-fashioned”) to your vocabulary, too.
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