What's the difference between rebut and recant?

Rebut


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To drive or beat back; to repulse.
  • (v. t.) To contradict, meet, or oppose by argument, plea, or countervailing proof.
  • (v. i.) To retire; to recoil.
  • (v. i.) To make, or put in, an answer, as to a plaintiff's surrejoinder.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) He did not speculate about when that would be, and he did not rebut Cardin’s claim that it could be next month.
  • (2) Hinton’s defense lawyer wrongly thought he had only $1,000 to hire a ballistics expert to try to rebut the prosecution testimony about the bullets.
  • (3) "Once again, UK data has rebutted the claim that the UK is as bad as some of the eurozone's struggling economies," said ING economist Rob Carnell.
  • (4) However, letters to Hunt from the alliance's lawyers in January and February complaining about the way the process was being handled and issues with fair access were vigorously rebutted.
  • (5) He was at pains to rebut criticism in the western media over the jailing of journalists caught up in the long-running investigation into an attempted military coup and claims that the government has used the case to intimidate sections of the press.
  • (6) In this reply, we rebut his arguments and also describe new pharmacological and other recent data showing unambiguously that the nerve activity we measured was not of postganglionic sympathetic origin.
  • (7) The government has rebutted accusations that a vast free trade deal being negotiated between the EU and the US will act as a cover to privatise the NHS while also watering down food standards and banking regulations.
  • (8) The foreign affairs minister was one of a series of government ministers who sought to rebut concerns about labour movement provisions in the yet-to-be legislated agreement.
  • (9) This observation rebuts the concept of additional perfusion of capillaries which are devoid of plasma flow under resting conditions during coronary vasodilation.
  • (10) Nevertheless, Miliband’s inability to rebut criticisms that are longstanding and widespread is very much something that he has to take responsibility for himself.
  • (11) There is also the problematic fact that postcolonial theory has, in its account of the colonial encounter, focused almost exclusively on the matter of imperial misrepresentation: it largely ignores what non-western cultures were up to in the last two centuries, unless they were seen to be actively engaged in rebutting the coloniser.
  • (12) Rudd has also proposed sweeping changes to the rules governing the election of Labor leaders, in order to rebut Coalition claims that the “faceless” men could again dump him if Labor was voted back in.
  • (13) Schmidt still denies that he is interested in a career in politics; the question was rebutted with a brief "no".
  • (14) Mitt's now trying to rebut the "Let Detroit go bankrupt" line o argument, which is dumb.
  • (15) It was the time of the first intifada and Cholodenko worked for a lawyer in the justice department whose job it was to rebut the charges laid down in reports by the likes of Amnesty International.
  • (16) But, rebutting Hayden, he said: "What makes the United States special and what makes you special is precisely the fact that we are willing to uphold our values and our ideals even when it's hard, not just when it's easy, even when we are afraid and under threat, not just when its expedient to do so.
  • (17) We cannot let that happen.” “He says he has foreign policy experience because he ran the Miss Universe pageant in Russia,” she said, adding at another point in the speech: “This isn’t reality television, this is actual reality.” Later, Clinton added: “It is not hard to see how a Trump presidency could lead to a global economic crisis.” The former secretary of state’s speech, staged in front of a wall of US flags, rebutted a foreign policy address Trump made in April in which he promised to save “humanity itself” and “shake the rust off America’s foreign policy”.
  • (18) Chilcot wants to ensure that those criticised are given every opportunity to rebut the criticism.
  • (19) But he added: "To rebut it: I wouldn't like to have been one of those actors who hit stardom quite early on and expected it to continue and was stuck doing scripts that I didn't particularly like just to keep the income up.
  • (20) Most contentiously, the researchers rebutted the opinion of some ministers that it is the expanding number of food banks that is driving up the demand for food parcels.

Recant


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To withdraw or repudiate formally and publicly (opinions formerly expressed); to contradict, as a former declaration; to take back openly; to retract; to recall.
  • (v. i.) To revoke a declaration or proposition; to unsay what has been said; to retract; as, convince me that I am wrong, and I will recant.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The prime minister made an unscheduled statement on Tuesday morning from behind a lectern outside 10 Downing Street, in which she recanted her repeated promise not to go to the polls before 2020.
  • (2) The hordes poured in to defend her, the story went global and by lunchtime on Friday the leader of the council was having to recant and apologise, live on BBC Radio 4.
  • (3) My article for the Forest Journal, robustly supporting the chancellor’s earlier policy, is already with the printer … Having been persuaded of the correctness of the course that the chancellor is now following, I merely needed an opportunity to recant.” Philip Hammond’s letter Ann-Marie Trevelyan, a backbench MP who had raised concerns about the NICs rise, told the Guardian she welcomed the chancellor’s change of heart: “My leaflets had ‘no tax rises’ on them.
  • (4) One explicitly said he sought no recantation of past remarks nor a change of position on Israel, just reassurance that "you won't put us through another four years of this".
  • (5) The experience with zomepirac (Zomax) and the unexpected incidence of severe anaphylactic reactions is recanted as an unfortunate illustrated example that has served to upgrade the adverse reaction reporting process.
  • (6) Though Berger never specifically recanted, he did later admit that Ways of Seeing was too rushed and crude, and that he had not allowed for the genius factor.
  • (7) Referring to the two hadith in which Muhammad reportedly condemns apostasy as a capital offence, Maher Hathout , author of In Pursuit of Justice: The Jurisprudence of Human Rights in Islam writes: "both of them contradict the Qur'an and other instances in which the Prophet did not compel anyone to embrace Islam, nor punish them if they recanted."
  • (8) Anders also said that on 2 May Sterling met Stiviano at the Four Seasons hotel in Beverly Hills – just before she recorded an interview with ABC's Barbara Walters – and asked her to recant statements about the tape's authenticity and confess to doctoring it.
  • (9) Mal Brough has categorically denied asking Peter Slipper’s former staffer to procure copies of the Speaker’s diary for him, recanting an admission he apparently made during a 60 Minutes interview last year.
  • (10) Instead, Flint professed her loyalty, only to recant 18 hours later, while Hutton insisted his departure was personal and that he wanted Brown to stay in post.
  • (11) As a former prosecutor herself, Gold said it is tough to bring charges when a witness recants, even though it is possible to bring a case to trial when there is no witness prepared to testify.
  • (12) He later recanted the position on reducing Asian immigration.
  • (13) There were no breast-beating recantations but, according to Dawidoff, "he still [had] reservations about how far afield he took country music from the relatively unadorned prewar downhome sound."
  • (14) In an interview on the 7.30 program, the independent senator Andrew Wilkie said Garrett’s recanting of the story “beggars belief”.
  • (15) Instead of defending her position, Penny caved, recanted, and commented mournfully that "having your privilege checked" was painful.
  • (16) • Five doctors were coerced by the Sri Lankan government to recant on casualty figures they gave to journalists in the last months of island's brutal civil war.
  • (17) William Sweeney, the FBI’s assistant director in New York, said on Monday that the FBI had got a report of a domestic incident involving Rahami some time ago, but the allegations had been recanted, and “there’s nothing to indicate that currently he was on our radar”.
  • (18) The change in the tide was obvious when arch-Blairite Peter Mandelson went on television to recant.
  • (19) It would recant the illiberal legacy of Labour home secretaries, of Charles Clarke , Jack Straw and Jacqui Smith , and reassert individual rights against the surveillance state.
  • (20) Nick Herbert, the Tory MP who chaired his party’s remain campaign, wrote in the Guardian that anyone warning against hard Brexit was branded as “heretics who must recant and swear adherence to the new faith”.