unsay

present singular third person unsays · participle present unsaying · participle past unsaid · past unsaid

1. To withdraw, retract (something said).

   And in the first place, you will be so good as to unsay that story about selling his head, which if true I take to be good evidence that this harpooneer is stark mad […]

   1851 November 14, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC

   Synonyms: retract

2. To cause something not to have been said; to make it so that one never said something (since this is physically impossible, usually in the subjunctive).

   I wish I could unsay that.

   3 more examples

   There are some things I'd like to unsay... to my boss... right before he decided to fire me.

   Certainly if Chriſts Apoſtle have ſet down but two, then according to his own words, though he himſelf ſhuld unſay it, and not only the Angel of Smyrna, but an Angel from Heaven ſhould bear us down that there be three, Saint Paul has doom'd him twiſe, Let him be accurſt [...]

   1641 June or July, John Milton, Of Prelatical Episcopacy, and Whether It may be Deduc’d from the Apostolical Times by Virtue of Those Testimonies which are Alledg’d to that Purpose in Some Late Treatises; […]; republished in A Complete Collection of the Historical, Political, and Miscellaneous Works of John Milton, […], volume I, Amsterdam [actually London: s.n.], 1698, →OCLC, page 247

   Unsay those haunting words.

   1918, Algernon Blackwood, Karma, →ISBN, page 58