unconfess

English

Etymology

un- +‎ confess

Verb

unconfess (third-person singular simple present unconfesses, present participle unconfessing, simple past and past participle unconfessed)

1. (rare, transitive, intransitive) To retract a confession.
   • 2011, Chip Martin, A School of London: A Trilogy, page 319:

     'It's no good trying to unconfess what three sessions of Auditing have uncovered. That boy is a devil.'

   • 2014, Shuen-fu Lin, Stephen Owen, The Vitality of the Lyric Voice, page 91:

     In the third couplet he confesses his destitution, says straightforwardly what he had said in the first couplet through the negations of irony; he confesses his utter destitution only to unconfess it in the final couplet.

   • 2021, Cate Quinn, Black Widows, page 363:

     Like there's no established ensemble for driving your son's widow home after she's confessed and then unconfessed to his murder.