From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishretrievalre‧triev‧al /rɪˈtriːvəl/ noun [uncountable] 1 technicalTD the process of getting back information stored on a computer system a new system that should speed up information retrieval2 GETthe act of getting back something you have lost or left somewhere3 → be beyond/past retrieval
Examples from the Corpus
retrieval• a retrieval system• The online catalogue has exposed obstacles to effective retrieval which library and catalogue users have faced all along in previous manual systems.• Effective retrieval from natural language indexed databases requires sophisticated search software.• information retrieval• These techniques allow us to examine recognition and name retrieval processes in detail.• Obviously, the speed of retrieval is not an issue if the images involved are still pictures.• The Endeavour astronauts prepared to return to Earth on Friday after a successful nine-day satellite retrieval mission.• Direct Stream Digital would preserve all these variations and allow the retrieval of any one of them.• Firstly, it involves the acquisition, organization and communication as well as the retrieval of information. 