Recant

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

To recant usually means to (publicly or in the presence of relevant officials) state that one has stopped holding a particular opinion, often an opinion which is in defiance of current religious or political dogma. See wiktionary:recant. It came from Latin re-cantare = "to sing back" or "to sing again". Recantation can also have other meanings:-

• A figure of speech in Roman poetry where the poet describes something at length with exaggeration and hyperbole, and then briefly describes it again without the exaggeration.
• From that meaning's contained idea of correcting an error, came the usual meaning described above.
• See also palinode.