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recant

UK/ɹəˈkænt/US/ɹəˈkænt/
verbC2Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,443 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: recanted, recanting, recants

To recant is to take back publicly what you once declared. Recant his statement, forced to recant, refuse to recant.

It is public and formal, which is what separates it from simply changing your mind. Galileo is the famous case: he recanted under threat and the story that he muttered a denial afterwards is almost certainly invented. The Latin means to sing back.

Definitions of recant

  1. 1verbrecantTo take back publicly what you once declared.C2

    “Galileo was forced to recant his view that the Earth moves around the Sun.”

recant is a withdrawing.

Remember it

Re- is back and the rest is Latin for sing, the same singing behind chant. To recant is to sing your own words back in again.

hooks ontosingchant

Where it comes from

Latin recantare means to sing back or revoke — re, back, plus cantare, to sing. Chant is a relative.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *keh₂n-

  2. Latin

    recanto — to sing back, reecho, sing again, repeat in singing, recant, recall, revoke, charm back or away

  3. English, today

    recant

Built from

  • re- · Latin — back
  • canto · Latin — to chant, to sing

First attested in 1535, from Latin recanto (“to sing back, reecho, sing again, repeat in singing, recant, recall, revoke, charm back or away”), from re- (“back”) + canto (“to chant, to sing”), frequentative of cano.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

recant in the wild

  • In answer to questioning, he defended the views that had been criticized and refused to recant them.

    Diet of Worms

  • After his death in 931, his followers were accused of heresy and forced to publicly recant his teachings by the Umayyad authorities.

    Ibn Masarra

  • Much of the evidence against them was hearsay, although there was a confession by Lloyd, which she did not fully recant even with her execution imminent.

    Bideford witch trial

  • "hanging"), was a Japanese torture technique used in the 17th century to coerce Christians ("Kirishitan") to recant their faith.

    Ana-tsurushi

  • One of the victim's hands would be held tight with a rope, but the other would be left free so that he could signal his willingness to recant.

    Ana-tsurushi

1 / 2

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the canto family

chantrecant

recant — used about once every 6,207 pages · #10,443 · point at the bar for the others