These words apply when a person rejects something, give up his past behaviour, or withdraws from a previously stated stand or belief. Forswear indicates the renunciation of past behaviour; once, it referred to taking an oath to this effect, but now it can suggest an emphatic willingness to give up something completely. Most often, the word suggests an open admission of guilt or fault arising from such behaviour: a country that forswore future military aggression as a result of its decisive defeat; no use asking alcoholics to make high-minded oaths forswearing drinking. Where forswear can suggest moral resolve or penitence, abjure is more forceful in sometimes implying an angry rejection; it also referred once to renunciation under oath, but less often applies in this way now: a union official who abjured mediation as a solution to the dispute, especially considering the unwillingness of management to negotiate; bitter disappointments that made him abjure marriage in favour of a series of affairs.

Disavow and disclaim are now most commonly used to deny complicity or responsibility; thus both contrast with forswear , where an admission of guilt is often implied. Disavow once could involve a formal oath; now it more often points to a refusal to acknowledge something as valid or an insistence that no connection exists between one’s own stand and that of another.

• The candidate disavowed completely the statement that had been attributed to him by reporters; The board disavowed the action of the executive and denied that his promises were binding on the company.

Disclaim can also function as a denial of responsibility, but its special point is the giving up of a right or title that might be offered in one’s own behalf.

• He disclaimed all complicity in the assassination plot; The company disclaimed any interest in the disputed land, even though the original title bore its name.

Disown at its most general can suggest any sort of abandonment: The sponsors disowned the project after the poor showing it made during its first year in operation. The word is often used in a special way, however, referring to the total rejection of a disliked person, often a near relative: a father who disowned his son and wrote him out of his will.

The remaining words all deal with a retreat from previously stated positions. Take back is the most informal of all these words, applying to an apologetic withdrawal of anything one has said previously.

• His friend kept him pinned to the floor until he took back the insult; She immediately took back her accusation once she saw how wrong she had been.

Retract can apply to the same situation, often indicating a formal, official or public statement.

• He threatened to sue unless his opponent retracted the libellous allegation; The defendant retracted his confession, claming that it had been coerced.

Recant once indicated the solemn retracting of a heresy by a former adherent: Witches were required to recant publicly or be hanged. It still applies to the repudiation of doctrine or ideology and is more forceful than retract in suggesting a total disavowing or abject capitulation, including an admission of past guilt and an implied promise to forswear the error in the future: those who recanted Communism after Russia’s ruthless suppression of the Hungarian revolt in 1956.