unaccept

present singular third person unaccepts · participle present unaccepting · participle past unaccepted · past unaccepted

1. transitiveuncommonTo rescind one's acceptance of.

   Of course, they were free to unaccept that idea, but unacceptance was a secondary, deliberate revision of an initially accepted belief.

   1998, Michael Raymond DePaul, William M. Ramsey, Rethinking intuition: the psychology of intuition, page 49

   5 more examples

   Mr. Hurst interrupted, 'to have his name mixed up with shady people, as Ormond says; so, my dear! the long and short of it is, you must refuse her invitation to go there on this visit!' 'But I have accepted it.' 'Unaccept it then,' jocosely.

   1880, Mrs. Harry Bennett-Edwards, In Sheep's Clothing, volume 2, page 154

   According to Spinoza's view, comprehension automatically entails acceptance, and only afterward is the mind able to proceed to unaccept the statement.

   1993, Sik Hung Ng, James J. Bradac, Power in language: verbal communication and social influence

   The rest of the world hasn't accepted his argument, but also the rest of the world has never been able to unaccept it, so it is fairly safe to say that it is the world's greatest argument, whether it is valid or not.

   1996, Albert Lamphier Hammond, Theory of knowledge: a direct realist approach, page 255

   I got this offer in California about an hour after I accepted Rosenfeld's job, so I called him right back. I was calling him about two or three hours after I'd accepted the job — to unaccept it. He was absolutely outraged.

   2000, James A. Anderson, Edward Rosenfeld, Talking Nets: An Oral History of Neural Networks, page 369

   In line with Gilbert's writings (1993; Gilbert, Krull, & Malone, 1990), if students lack the motivation or mental ability to "unaccept" the information they have encoded in order to pass my exams, they cannot escape believing it.

   2008, Michael F. Shaughnessy, Meta-cognition: A Recent Review of Research, Theory, and Perspectives