Retraction

//ɹɪˈtɹækʃən// noun

noun ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An act or instance of retracting. countable, uncountable
  2. 2
    the act of pulling or holding or drawing a part back wordnet
  3. 3
    A statement printed or broadcast in a public forum which effects the withdrawal of an earlier assertion, and which concedes that the earlier assertion was in error. countable, uncountable
  4. 4
    a disavowal or taking back of a previous assertion wordnet
  5. 5
    A continuous function from a topological space onto a subspace which is the identity on that subspace. countable, uncountable

Synonyms

All synonyms
disavowalabandonmentabjurationabjurationabjurementabolishment

Example

More examples

"A Ph.D. student found a fundamental flaw in research published in 2014, and upon which she was building her research, which led to a retraction by the original author."

Etymology

From re- + traction or retract + -ion.

Related phrases

clot retraction timetopological space

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.