Retient

Retient is a French verb form. It is the third-person singular present indicative of retenir, a verb meaning to retain, to hold back, to keep, or to remember. In contemporary usage, retient can describe keeping something in possession, restraining an action, or remembering information. Examples include Il retient son souffle (he holds his breath), Elle retient ses larmes (she holds back her tears), and Le texte retient l’attention du lecteur (the text holds the reader’s attention). The sense of memory is often expressed as il retient bien les leçons (he remembers the lessons well).

Morphology and related forms: retenir is an irregular verb in many of its tenses. Present tense conjugation is je retiens, tu retiens, il retient, nous retenons, vous retenez, ils retiennent. The passé composé is formed with avoir and the past participle retenu (j’ai retenu, tu as retenu, etc.). The passé simple, more common in literary texts, uses il retint. The present participle is retenant. The noun forms associated with the verb include la retenue (restraint or forbearance) and la rétention (retention, withholding, or retention in a technical sense).

Etymology and related terms: retenir derives from Old French and ultimately from Latin retinēre, meaning to hold back, from re- (back) plus tenēre (to hold). The same root underpins related words in French and other Romance languages, as well as cognates in English such as retain.

See also: retention, restraint, memory in language, and related French verb conjugations. Retient serves primarily as a grammatical form rather than as a standalone lexical entry, but it appears frequently in everyday French through its present-tense usage of retenir.