retraction
Americannoun
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the act of retracting or the state of being retracted.
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withdrawal of a promise, statement, opinion, etc..
His retraction of the libel came too late.
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retractile power.
noun
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the act of retracting or state of being retracted
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the withdrawal of a statement, charge, etc
Usage
What is a retraction? Retraction is the withdrawal of a statement or promise, such as in a news story. When a news outlet gets facts wrong in a story, they publish a retraction that states what facts were wrong and what the correct facts are. In general, retraction is the act of pulling something back, such as the retraction of a payment (taking the payment back). Example: If this turns out to be true, we’ll have to issue a retraction about last week’s issue.
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of retraction
1350–1400; Middle English retraccioun < Latin retractiōn- (stem of retractiō ), equivalent to Latin retract ( us ) ( see retract 1) + -iōn- -ion
Explanation
When you change your mind and take back something you said previously, that's a retraction. If a politician says something offensive, he'll sometimes issue a formal retraction later. When someone needs to withdraw an opinion or backpedal on something they've said (especially publicly), they send out a retraction. A newspaper editor might publish a retraction after a badly reported story is printed, and astronomers who discover a new star might announce a retraction after realizing it was just a smudge on the lens of their telescope. The Latin root is retractionem, "a drawing back."
Vocabulary lists containing retraction
Power Prefix: re-
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Journalism
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Additional sources included records of retracted studies from Retraction Watch, discussion comments from PubPeer and article metadata such as editor names, submission dates and acceptance dates from selected journals.
From Science Daily • Mar. 7, 2026
Appeared in the December 10, 2025, print edition as 'A Climate Study Retraction for the Ages'.
From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 9, 2025
Given the staid pace of academic publishing, publishing this many corrections and retractions only a few months after the initial concerns were raised “is, bizarrely, pretty quick,” said Ivan Oransky, co-founder of Retraction Watch.
From Los Angeles Times • May 16, 2024
Retractions of research papers have been on the rise, with more than 10,000 last year, according to Ivan Oransky, who teaches medical journalism at New York University and co-founded the Retraction Watch blog.
From Seattle Times • Feb. 7, 2024
The book of the Lion is mentioned in his Retraction, and by Lidgate in the prologue to the Fall of Princes, but is now lost, as is that.
From The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) Volume I. by Cibber, Theophilus
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
