RETRACT • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Retract

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/ritrˈækt/ Listen

verb

Retract v. t. (past & past part. retracted; pres. part. retracting)

1.

To draw back; to draw up or shorten; as, the cat can retract its claws; to retract a muscle.

2.

To withdraw; to recall; to disavow; to recant; to take back; as, to retract an accusation or an assertion. "I would as freely have retracted this charge of idolatry as I ever made it."

3.

To take back,, as a grant or favor previously bestowed; to revoke. (Obs.)

Synonyms: To recall; withdraw; rescind; revoke; unsay; disavow; recant; abjure; disown.

Retract v. i.

1.

To draw back; to draw up; as, muscles retract after amputation.

2.

To take back what has been said; to withdraw a concession or a declaration. "She will, and she will not; she grants, denies, Consents, retracts, advances, and then files."

noun

Retract n. (Far.) The pricking of a horse's foot in nailing on a shoe.

See images of 'Retract'

Etymology of 'Retract'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Retract" Quotes from Famous Books

... such a Journal in such times, to contribute towards it for many years, to bear patiently the reproach and poverty which it caused, and to look back and see that I have nothing to retract, and no intemperance and violence to reproach myself with, is a career of life which I must think to be extremely fortunate. Strange and ludicrous are the changes in human affairs. The Tories are now on the treadmill, and the well-paid ...

— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell

... both Adam Ferris and the Earl thought of the man in Vienna who had once dared, and whom the gentle-mannered duellist before them had sent quickly to his own place, with no more time given than to retract his words and receive holy absolution. For in the Austria of that time two gentlemen took a priest as well as a doctor with them to the field of honour. Then Adam Ferris remembered his lonely house below the dark green pines ...

— Patsy • S. R. Crockett

... to me how wicked it was to break a promise. I did not know what to do: all that evening I was in such a state of feverish excitement, that my grandmother was quite astonished. The fact was, that I was ashamed to retract my promise, and yet I trembled at the deed that I was about to do. I went into my room and got into bed. I remained awake; and about midnight I got up, and creeping softly into my grandfather's room, I went to his clothes, ...

— Valerie • Frederick Marryat

... was not an unfair one. The November constitution, by which Denmark, immediately after the accession of the protocol prince, the present king, Christian IX., proposed to incorporate Schleswig, was a violation of treaty obligations. The Danish Government was required to retract its course. It refused, and war followed. What will be the result of it, what even the Prussian Government wishes to be the result of it, is a matter of uncertainty. Suspicions of a secret treaty between it and Austria find easy credence, according to which, as is supposed, nothing but their ...

— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... Frankfort cigar. So matters went on for nearly a year. I became a morose and melancholy man. This will account for all the bitter and ill-natured things I said of the Germans in some of my sketches, every word of which I now retract. ...

— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

Copyright © 2025 Diccionario ingles.com