Retrenching

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The practice of curtailing expenses to improve financial efficiency involves organizations strategically reducing their operational scope or resource allocation, thereby enhancing performance through minimized spending
2. Cutting back on spending or resources to lower overall expenditures
3. Limiting financial outlays in order to stabilize or improve economic health

Etymology: Retrenching is the present participle of "retrench", a verb that began as a military and farming image. Its ancestor in Old French, "retranchier", meant to get rid of or remove, and it was built from "re-" (again) and a verb meaning to cut. That cutting verb is itself uncertain: it may come from a Vulgar Latin form meaning "cut in three parts", or from Latin "truncare", "to maim by cutting off pieces". English "trench" is a relative, so a retrench is, at root, something cut again and again. The English verb carries the same sense. It was used of digging a new defensive line behind an existing one, the "re-" marking a second line dug inside the first. From there it came to mean cutting back or reducing, and in modern English the sense is almost always financial: a company or government retrenches when it trims spending.

Synonyms: reducing, cutting

Antonyms: expanding, increasing