retraction

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The act of retracting or the state of being retracted.
• noun The act of recanting or disavowing a previously held statement or belief.
• noun A formal statement of disavowal.
• noun The power of drawing back or of being drawn back.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun The act of retracting, or the state of being retracted or drawn back: as, the retraction of a cat's claws.
• noun A falling back; retreat.
• noun The act of undoing or unsaying something previously done or said; the act of rescinding or recanting, as previous measures or opinions.
• noun Synonyms See renounce.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun The act of retracting, or drawing back; the state of being retracted.
• noun The act of withdrawing something advanced, stated, claimed, or done; declaration of change of opinion; recantation.
• noun The act of retracting or shortening.
• noun The state or condition of a part when drawn back, or towards the center of the body.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun An act or instance of retracting.
• noun A statement printed or broadcast in a public forum which effects the withdrawal of an earlier assertion, and which concedes that the earlier assertion was in error.
• noun mathematics A continuous function from a topological space onto a subspace which is the identity on that subspace.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun the act of pulling or holding or drawing a part back
• noun a disavowal or taking back of a previous assertion