What's the difference between retrench and trench?

Retrench


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To cut off; to pare away.
  • (v. t.) To lessen; to abridge; to curtail; as, to retrench superfluities or expenses.
  • (v. t.) To confine; to limit; to restrict.
  • (v. t.) To furnish with a retrenchment; as, to retrench bastions.
  • (v. i.) To cause or suffer retrenchment; specifically, to cut down living expenses; as, it is more reputable to retrench than to live embarrassed.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The axe has fallen again at Australia’s research agency, the CSIRO , with another 75 researchers retrenched across the organisation’s future manufacturing, agriculture and digital productivity programs.
  • (2) With fiscal retrenchment likely after next year's election, the MPC could well be in this for the long haul.
  • (3) "My position is that increases the value of our assets," he added, referring to the provision of local content and advertising opportunities as newspaper groups in particular retrench.
  • (4) And can retrenchment be done in such a way that it is clearly in line with the progressive values of a social democratic party?
  • (5) In scientific terms, a panel of concluding discussants (Drs Kendell, Torrey, and Waddington) were in some measure of agreement that genetics, particularly molecular genetics, appears to be experiencing a period of retrenchment, while epidemiology is experiencing something of a renaissance.
  • (6) HSBC has insisted it remains committed to China , even as it continued its retrenchment from insurance by selling off its 15.6% stake in Chinese insurer Ping An for $9.4bn (£5.8bn).
  • (7) Even at the end of this fourth retrenching year, in this scenario we'd be less than half way there in spending-cuts terms, with 60% of the pain still to come.
  • (8) It was the suspicion in the markets that a rainbow coalition of the progressive left would break under the strain of pushing through politically unpopular fiscal retrenchment that explained tonight's markets rally.
  • (9) It undermines confidence and causes consumers to retrench, which actually weakens the economy.
  • (10) Even if the single currency remains intact some €1.3tn of credit could be sucked out of the system as banks retrench to their home markets, unwinding years of financial integration, the Credit Suisse analysis warns.
  • (11) "The NUS has retrenched back into the old narrative that there is a hard-left and moderates, and that we have to do everything we can to marginalise them.
  • (12) At BP he came in to the refining and chemical division after the Texas City fire and masterminded a huge retrenchment with thousands being taken off the oil company's payroll, including those at Grangemouth in Scotland.
  • (13) Grand promises of Paris climate deal undermined by squalid retrenchments Read more I’m talking to Howard Bamsey, who I’ve encountered at many of these events – he was Australia’s lead negotiator in Kyoto in 1997 when the protocol was agreed as well as the special envoy on climate change in Copenhagen in 2009.
  • (14) "While consumers are increasingly cutting back on their spending out of necessity, but it is also evident that many consumers are also retrenching out of choice, reflecting their heightened concerns about the economy and jobs."
  • (15) In reviewing the public mental health services of 11 California counties during a period of fiscal retrenchment, we found several common trends: a greater focus on the severely mentally disabled; an increase in utilization of hospital-based care, residential treatment, day treatment, and case management services; and a decrease in the capacity of traditional outpatient services.
  • (16) This article describes practical steps in managing organizational retrenchment in nursing.
  • (17) One- and 5-minute Apgar scores were 8 or more in all, and umbilical acid-base values were within normal limits in all of them, though the base deficit in group AD was significantly lower than that in group M. Atropine premedication makes it possible to retrench the ephedrine dosage without any harmful effect on either mother or fetus, and ephedrine infusion makes it easy to cope with changes in maternal blood pressure.
  • (18) The UK's biggest pay TV provider, buoyed by subscriptions that are still rising in the economic downturn, is in bullish mood, spending money while competitors retrench, as exemplified by its splashy 1980s-style ­advertising for the drama adaptation of Martina Cole's The Take.
  • (19) Today, an estimated 1 million public sector workers will walk out in co-ordinated strike action against a retrenchment of workers' rights and a real-terms pay cut that has seen them £2,000 out of pocket since 2010.
  • (20) My own strong reaction to the novel stemmed from Austen's depiction of society, a world of conspicuous consumption (Sir Walter Elliot cannot stand the idea of retrenching when he mismanages his finances and prefers to leave his house rather than be seen with a footman or a picture less) and his arrogant, good-looking daughter Elizabeth can't be seen without all the props, either.

Trench


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To cut; to form or shape by cutting; to make by incision, hewing, or the like.
  • (v. t.) To fortify by cutting a ditch, and raising a rampart or breastwork with the earth thrown out of the ditch; to intrench.
  • (v. t.) To cut furrows or ditches in; as, to trench land for the purpose of draining it.
  • (v. t.) To dig or cultivate very deeply, usually by digging parallel contiguous trenches in succession, filling each from the next; as, to trench a garden for certain crops.
  • (v. i.) To encroach; to intrench.
  • (v. i.) To have direction; to aim or tend.
  • (v. t.) A long, narrow cut in the earth; a ditch; as, a trench for draining land.
  • (v. t.) An alley; a narrow path or walk cut through woods, shrubbery, or the like.
  • (v. t.) An excavation made during a siege, for the purpose of covering the troops as they advance toward the besieged place. The term includes the parallels and the approaches.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Its boot always held a bivouac bag, a trenching tool of some sort and a towel and trunks, in case he passed somewhere interesting to sleep, dig, or swim.
  • (2) The RSC’s Erica Whyman stages a story inspired by a local man, the Royal Warwickshire Regiment’s Captain Bruce Bairnsfather, who was known as the cartoonist of the trenches and survived the war to work at the original Shakespeare Memorial theatre.
  • (3) Stephen Fisher, one of the archaeologists recording the site, says digging the trenches would also have been training for the men, who would soon have to do it for real, and the little slit trenches scattered across the site, just big enough for one man to cower in, might represent their first efforts.
  • (4) Upon segregation of the conidium from the phialide cell by conidial wall formation, 'trench-like' invaginations gradually appeared in the plasma membrane and a disorganized rodlet pattern was formed on the outer surface of the maturing conidial wall.
  • (5) The field was taped off while a mechanical digger clawed at the ground, making parallel trenches in the sandy earth.
  • (6) Scores of archaeologists working in a waterlogged trench through the wettest summer and coldest winter in living memory have recovered more than 10,000 objects from Roman London , including writing tablets, amber, a well with ritual deposits of pewter, coins and cow skulls, thousands of pieces of pottery, a unique piece of padded and stitched leather – and the largest collection of lucky charms in the shape of phalluses ever found on a single site.
  • (7) He sees HS2 as a "huge trench across the country where we can learn an awful lot about new sites.
  • (8) But his attitude gradually hardened, particularly after he reached the trenches.
  • (9) "It looks solid," said Jean Pascal Zanders, a Belgian expert who runs a blog on chemical weapons called The Trench .
  • (10) What they learn can be summed up in one word: trenches.
  • (11) The archaeologists had to wear slippers to preserve the site which, at the bottom of a two-metre trench, picked up much damp.
  • (12) A variety of cold exposure injuries were discussed, including frostnip, chilblains, trench foot, frostbite, and hypothermia.
  • (13) Alan Trench, an academic specialising in devolution and adviser to expert government commissions, said: "It's clear that Labour voters generally have concerns about how things are at the moment.
  • (14) But if trapped deep inside wreckage or an underwater trench, the effectiveness can be hindered.
  • (15) French troops wearing an early form of gas mask in the trenches during the second Battle of Ypres in 1915.
  • (16) Keeping within the string lines of your footprint, dig a trench about 15cm deep and lay the foundation stones flat and level.
  • (17) But according to Wayne Cocroft, an English Heritage expert on wartime archaeology, although 20 other trench training sites have been recorded across Britain, many have been damaged by later development, and both the scale and the state of preservation of the Gosport complex is exceptional.
  • (18) Working in a location to the southeast of Kathmandu, Paul Tapponnier, an earth scientist at the Earth Observatory of Singapore , and his team dug trenches across the fault and used charcoal to date when it had moved.
  • (19) There are no trenches, barbed wire fences or tank traps.
  • (20) Accessory glandular tissues were atrophied and debris filled the trenches of the papillae.

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