What's the difference between recant and retractate?
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”.
Retractate
Definition:
(v. t.) To retract; to recant.
Example Sentences:
(1) Brain damage may be followed by a number of dynamic events including reactive synaptogenesis, rerouting of axons to unusual locations and altered axon retraction processes.
(2) Tottenham Hotspur’s £400m redevelopment of White Hart Lane could include a retractable grass pitch as the club explores the possibility of hosting a new NFL franchise.
(3) Any MP who claims this is not statutory regulation is a liar, and should be forced to retract and apologise, or face a million pound fine.
(4) During the first 15 to 20 min of metamorphosis the larval arms are retracted and resorbed into the aboral surface of the juvenile.
(5) • Written, oral and video statements of self-incrimination and self-renunciation by the detainees, apparently induced by the authorities, have been released through official media channels (for example, lawyer Zhang Kai was induced to make such a statement, which he later retracted).
(6) Duane's retraction syndrome is a congenital eye movement disorder characterized by a deficiency of abduction, mild limitation of adduction, with retraction and narrowing of the palpebral fissure on attempted adduction.
(7) Axonal trees display differential growth during development or regeneration; that is, some branches stop growing and often retract while other branches continue to grow and form stable synaptic connections.
(8) She said she was not worried by Rubio’s one-time position on his immigration bill, later retracted, that he could not support reform if it included citizenship for gay couples.
(9) Useful differential morphological criteria can be: star-like or transverse ring-shaped profile of isolated ulcerations, tubular ileocolic junction with retracted cecum and open valve, and uniformity of lesion in the comprehensive picture of the clinical case.
(10) Both require more brain retraction and have greater risk to the facial nerve than the translabyrinthine approach.
(11) Unlike posterior tympanoplasty, this technique makes it possible to meticulously remove the osteitic bone invariably found in the facial recess when there is infection of the retraction pocket.
(12) In the third patient laparotomy was applied owing to the bleeding from the retracted, cut uterine artery.
(13) Because of laboratory and clinical observation that recurrent nerve paralysis retracts the involved vocal cord from the midline, it was proposed that deliberate section of the recurrent nerve would improve the vocal quality of patients with spastic dysphonia.
(14) Seven to 30 days following axotomy the volume of the hypoglossal nucleus was significantly diminished, undoubtedly reflecting dendritic retraction (P less than 0.05).
(15) Contacts resulting in collapse and retraction were often accompanied by a rapid and transient burst of lamellipodial activity along the neurite 30-50 microns proximal to the retracting growth cone.
(16) At three, six, and twelve months after the first operation the development of retraction pockets was also studied.
(17) The anchoring wire can also be retracted and repositioned.
(18) The right occipital lobe is retracted laterally from the falx cerebri.
(19) These experiments demonstrated that accessory abducens is a primary controller of eye retraction through its axons to retractor bulbi.
(20) A commercial system for producing retracted compensators has been adapted to suit local needs, and is evaluated here.