retentio

Retentio is a Latin noun meaning the act of holding back, retaining, or withholding. It derives from the verb retinere, to hold back, and appears in classical and medieval Latin in legal, medical, and scholastic contexts. In English-language scholarship the noun retentio is rarely used outside direct quotations or as part of borrowed terms.

In medical Latin it occurs in phrases such as retentio urinae, urinary retention, and retentio placentae, placenta retention after delivery. Retentio in these compounds denotes a failure to release contents or achieve normal clearance at a given site, for example urine in the bladder or the placenta after birth. Urinary retention can be acute or chronic and has multiple causes, while placental retention is an obstetric condition requiring clinical management. Outside these modern loan phrases, retentio is seldom employed in contemporary English medical writing, which typically uses retention rather than the Latin form.

Historically, retentio also appeared in scholastic or legal Latin to describe withholding rights or custody, but such uses are now largely of historical interest. In linguistics or philology discussions, retentio is most often treated as a source term illustrating Latin retention of meaning in medical vocabulary. Today the general concept is expressed with the English word retention.