different between withdraw vs disavow

English

Etymology

From Middle English withdrawen (“to draw away, draw back”), from with- (“away, back”) + drawen (“to draw”). More at with-, draw.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /w?ð?d???/, /w???d???/
• Rhymes: -??

Verb

withdraw (third-person singular simple present withdraws, present participle withdrawing, simple past withdrew, past participle withdrawn)

1. (transitive) To pull (something) back, aside, or away.
   • 1594, Richard Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie

     Impossible it is that God should withdraw his presence from anything.

2. (intransitive) To stop talking to, or interacting with, other people and start thinking thoughts that are not related to what is happening around.
3. (transitive) To take back (a comment, etc); retract.

   to withdraw false charges

4. (transitive) To remove, to stop providing (one's support, etc); to take out of service.
5. (transitive) To extract (money from an account).
6. (intransitive) To retreat.
7. (intransitive) To be in withdrawal from an addictive drug etc. [from 20th c.]
   • 1994, Edward St Aubyn, Bad News, Picador 2006, p. 201:

     Simon had tried to rob a bank while he was withdrawing, but he had been forced to surrender to the police after they had fired several volleys at him.

Synonyms

• (take back): recant, unsay; See also Thesaurus:recant

Translations

References

• “withdraw”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–present.

English

Etymology

dis- +? avow, or from Old French desavouer.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /d?s??va?/
• Rhymes: -a?

Verb

disavow (third-person singular simple present disavows, present participle disavowing, simple past and past participle disavowed)

1. (transitive) To strongly and solemnly refuse to own or acknowledge; to deny responsibility for, approbation of, and the like.

   Synonyms: abjure, deny, disclaim, disown, reject

   Antonyms: accept, own up

2. (transitive) To deny; to show the contrary of; to deny legitimacy or achievement of any kind.

   Synonyms: disprove, deny, impugn, reject, repudiate

   Antonyms: accept, prove

Quotations

• 1809 — James Madison, First State of the Union address

  These considerations not having restrained the British Government from disavowing the arrangement by virtue of which its orders in council were to be revoked, and the event authorizing the renewal of commercial intercourse having thus not taken place, it necessarily became a question of equal urgency and importance whether the act prohibiting that intercourse was not to be considered as remaining in legal force.

• 1884 — Edwin Abbott Abbott, Flatland

  In a still more obscure passage he now desires to disavow the Circular or aristocratic tendencies with which some critics have naturally credited him.

• 1901 — H. G. Wells, The First Men in the Moon, ch 12

  It came to me as an absolute, for a moment an overwhelming shock. It seemed as though it wasn't a face, as though it must needs be a mask, a horror, a deformity, that would presently be disavowed or explained.

Related terms

• disavowal
• disavowed

Translations

Anagrams

• Wavoids