retract

verb

1. (transitive)To pull (something) back or back inside.

   “An airplane retracts its wheels for flight.”

   “The collector shoes are automatically retracted when the electric handle is moved from "service off" to "lock off".”

2. (specifically, transitive)To pull (something) back or back inside.

   “A cat can retract its claws.”

3. (rare, transitive)To avert (one's eyes or a gaze).
4. (transitive)To pronounce (a sound, especially a vowel) farther to the back of the vocal tract.
5. (obsolete, transitive)To hold back (something); to restrain.
6. (intransitive)To draw back; to draw up; to withdraw.

   “The bus was stuck at the stop as its wheelchair ramp wouldn’t retract after use.”

   “Muscles retract after amputation.”

7. (obsolete, transitive)To cancel or take back (something, such as an edict or a favour or grant previously bestowed); to rescind, to revoke.

   “Fill'd with the Satisfaction of their own diſcerning Faculties, they [natural history writers] paſs Judgment at firſt ſight; write on, and are above being ever brought to retract it.”

8. (obsolete, transitive)To break or fail to keep (a promise, etc.); to renege.
9. (obsolete, transitive)To take back or withdraw (something that has been said or written); to disavow, to repudiate.

   “I retract all the accusations I made about the senator and sincerely hope he won’t sue me.”

   “And yet this Pope himſelf, not many years after, retracted this Bull; […]”

   “She will, and ſhe will not; ſhe grants, denies, / Conſents, retracts, advances, and then flies, / Approving and rejecting in a Breath, / Now proff'ring Mercy, now preſenting Death!”

   “He has also suggested in a newspaper interview that China could be appeased if it were given partial control of Taiwan. An official in Taipei demanded that he retract his suggestion.”

10. (obsolete, transitive)Originally in chess and now in other games as well: to take back or undo (a move); specifically (card games) to take back or withdraw (a card which has been played).
11. (intransitive, obsolete)To decline or fail to do something promised; to break one's word.
12. (intransitive, obsolete)Of something said or written (such as published academic work): to take back or withdraw.

    “"Challenger was the man who came with some cock-and-bull story from South America." / "What story?" / "Oh, it was rank nonsense about some queer animals he had discovered. I believe he has retracted since. Anyhow, he has suppressed it all. He gave an interview to Reuter's, and there was such a howl that he saw it wouldn't do.["]”

13. (archaic, intransitive, obsolete)To change one's mind after declaring an intention to make a certain move.

noun

1. (obsolete)An act of retracting or withdrawing (a mistake, a statement, etc.); a retraction.

   “[T]hey began to finde fault with Poeſie, […] ſaying, that metaphors æmigmaticall, and covert words, yea and the ambiguities which Poetry uſeth, were but ſhifts, retracts, and evaſions to hide and cover all, whenſoever the events fell not out accordingly.”

2. (obsolete)A pulling back, especially (military) of an army or military troops; a pull-back, a retreat; also, a signal for this to be done.

   “Theſe Græcians alſo that made the retract, aduiſed Darius [III] to retire his Armie into the plaine of Meſopotamia, to the end that Alexander being entred into thoſe large fields and great Champions, he might haue inuironed the Macedonians on all ſides with his multitude; […]”

3. (obsolete)A subgroup of a given group such that there is a surjective endomorphism from the ambient group to the subgroup which is constant on the subgroup; in this case the subgroup is a retract of the ambient group. In symbols: H in G is a retract of G if there exists a surjective homomorphism σ from G to H with σ|_H= operatorname id.
4. (obsolete)The target of a retraction.
5. (obsolete)Synonym of retreat (“an act of accidentally injuring a horse's foot by incorrectly nailing it during shoeing”).