From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishretrievere‧trieve /rɪˈtriːv/ ●○○ verb [transitive] 1 formalGET to find something and bring it back → recover She bent down to retrieve her earring.retrieve something from something It took four days to retrieve all the bodies from the crash.2 technicalTD to get back information that has been stored in the memory of a computer The new version of the software automatically retrieves digital information.3 → retrieve a situation —retrievable adjective→ See Verb table
Examples from the Corpus
retrieve• If you want to retrieve a file from the computer press FIND and then enter the name of the file you want.• Zhong quickly retrieved a fist-sized chunk and rushed it to a frozen-food warehouse for safekeeping.• With a peculiar shiver of fear, he stooped to retrieve his spear.• When you learn how to search out and retrieve information you are in possession of a golden key to doing successful public relations.• I had left my bag at the railroad station and went back to retrieve it.• Can we retrieve our culture from the product pushers?• She'd agreed to meet Matthew half way, and retrieve the children.• She bent down and retrieved the map from under the car seat.• With some newsreaders, you might need to retrieve the message body and decode in two stages.• Right now we're concentrating on retrieving the spacecraft.retrieve something from something• Divers retrieved a body from the icy river on Wednesday.From Longman Business Dictionaryretrievere‧trieve /rɪˈtriːv/ verb [transitive]1COMPUTING to get back information that has been stored in a computerThe application stores andretrieves data according to the user’s requirements.Toretrieve afile, double click on it using the mouse.2if a company retrieves money, costs, or losses, it succeeds in obtaining an amount of money equal to the amount it spent or lostSYNRECOUPThe bank will have trouble retrieving anything like the value of its loans. —retrieval noun [uncountable]efficient information retrieval→ See Verb tableOrigin retrieve (1400-1500) Old French retrover “to find again”, from trover “to find” 