different between retiring vs asocial

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /???ta?(?)???/
• Rhymes: -a?????

Adjective

retiring

1. introverted, liking privacy and seclusion.
   • 1911, Theodore Dreiser, Jennie Gerhardt, Chapter LX:

     Lester was in the thick of social and commercial affairs; he walked in paths to which Jennie's retiring soul had never aspired.

Translations

Verb

retiring

1. present participle of retire

   Today is the party for our retiring co-workers.

Noun

retiring (plural retirings)

1. retirement
   • 1625, Francis Bacon, Apophthegms

     One day of those his retirings ^[sic], giving out that he was sick, his father Antigonus came on the sudden to visit him, and met a fair dainty youth coming out of his chamber.

English

Etymology

a- +? social; in the sense of “antisocial” and as a noun, appears to be a calque of German asozial / Asozialer.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /e??s???(?)l/

Adjective

asocial (comparative more asocial, superlative most asocial)

1. Not social, not relating to society.
   • 1974, Raymond Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form, New York: Schocken Books, 1975, Chapter 5, pp. 127-128,^[2]

     All media operations are in effect desocialised […] . But it is then interesting that from this wholly unhistorical and asocial base McLuhan projects certain images of society […]

2. Not sociable; having minimal social connections with others; not inclined to connect with others socially.
   • 1938, Sinclair Lewis, The Prodigal Parents, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, Chapter 36, p. 268,^[3]

     Mrs Alphen, from her deck chair, would call at him brightly, “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, being so selfish and neglecting us ladies and all!” and she would gesture at the deck chair beside her, but he would only smile and scuttle away, realizing that he was asocial and a scoundrel.

   • 1967, Joan Didion, “7000 Romaine, Los Angeles 38” in Slouching Towards Bethlehem, New York: Dell, 1968, p. 72,^[4]

     In a nation which increasingly appears to prize social virtues, Howard Hughes remains not merely antisocial but grandly, brilliantly, surpassingly, asocial. He is the last private man, the dream we no longer admit.

   • 1995, Oliver Sacks, An Anthropologist on Mars, New York: Knopf, p. 291,^[5]

     She herself was already asocial at the age of six months and stiffened in her mother’s arms at this time, and such reactions, common in autism, she also finds inexplicable in terms of theory of mind.

   • 2000, David Foster Wallace, “Rhetoric and the Math Melodrama” in Both Flesh and Not, Boston: Little, Brown, 2012,^[6]

     And it’s maybe because of math’s absolute, wholly abstract Truth that so many people still view the discipline as dry or passionless and its practitioners as asocial dweebs.

3. (sometimes proscribed) Antisocial.
   • 1951, Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968, Chapter 3, p. 147,^[7]

     Contrasting with the complete haphazardness with which the inmates are selected are the categories, meaningless in themselves but useful from the standpoint of organization, into which they are usually divided on their arrival. In the German camps there were criminals, politicals, asocial elements, religious offenders, and Jews, all distinguished by insignia.

   • 1977, Saul Bellow, “The Jefferson Lectures” in It All Adds Up, New York: Viking, 1994, p. 130,^[8]

     The so­cial worker speaks of asocial behavior. The term is familiar to the young criminal. The social worker is able to explain the causes of this asocial behavior. But the delinquent could do it too, and in the very same terms.

Derived terms

• asociality
• asocialize

Translations

Noun

asocial (plural asocials)

1. A person considered to be antisocial or to exhibit antisocial behaviour, especially as a classification used by the Nazi regime in Germany.
   • 2011, Esi Edugyan, Half-Blood Blues, Toronto: HarperCollins, 2013, Part 2, pp. 49-50,^[9]

     “Remember, there was no on-paper legislation against blacks, so they were often admitted to work camps on trumped-up charges and under various crimes. Some were interned as Communists, or as immigrants, who wore the blue badge. Or as homosexuals, who wore the pink badge, or as repeat criminals, who wore the green badge, or asocials, who wore the black badge.”

References

French

Etymology

a- +? social

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /a.s?.sjal/
• Homophones: asociale, asociales

Adjective

asocial (feminine singular asociale, masculine plural asociaux, feminine plural asociales)

1. asocial

Further reading

• “asocial” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Anagrams

• coalisa

Romanian

Etymology

From French asocial

Adjective

asocial m or n (feminine singular asocial?, masculine plural asociali, feminine and neuter plural asociale)

1. asocial

Declension

Spanish

Etymology

a- +? social

Adjective

asocial (plural asociales)

1. asocial

   Antonym: social

Further reading

• “asocial” in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014.