retreating

English

Verb

retreating

present participle and gerund of retreat

Noun

retreating (plural retreatings)

The act of moving back from something; a retreat.
- 1837, Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution: A History […], volume III (The Guillotine), London: James Fraser, […], →OCLC, book V (Terror the Order of the Day), page 319:
  But of the marchings and retreatings of these Six-thousand no Xenophon exists. Nothing, but an inarticulate hum, of cursing and sooty frenzy, surviving dubious in the memory of ages!