Recant

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To recant usually means to (publicly or in the presence of relevant officials) state that one has stopped holding a particular opinion, often an opinion which is in defiance of current religious or political dogma. See [wiktionary]. It came from Latin re-cantare = "to sing back" or "to sing again". Recantation can also have other meanings:-

A figure of speech in Roman poetry where the poet describes something at length with exaggeration and hyperbole, and then briefly describes it again without the exaggeration.
From that meaning's contained idea of correcting an error, came the usual meaning described above.
See also palinode.

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