Meaning and example
formally reject or disavow a formerly held belief, usually under pressure
He retracted his earlier statements about his religion
Plain-English interpretation
A prevalence score of 0.153 places abjure in the rare range on this site. In practical terms, the word was recognized by about 56.1% of people in the source dataset.
Related words
Similar-prevalence words
abeyanceRare
- Known by
- 56.2%
temporary cessation or suspension
probityRare
- Known by
- 56%
complete and confirmed integrity; having strong moral principles
ichthyologyRare
- Known by
- 56%
the branch of zoology that studies fishes
somnambulismRare
- Known by
- 56.4%
walking by a person who is asleep
inureRare
- Known by
- 56.4%
cause to accept or become hardened to; habituate
Source attribution
Brysbaert, M., Mandera, P., McCormick, S. F., & Keuleers, E. (2019). Word prevalence norms for 62,000 English lemmas. Behavior Research Methods, 51, 467-479.
Definitions and related terms are derived from WordNet. This page is part of the curated indexable word set.