unsign

English

Etymology

un- +‎ sign

Verb

unsign (third-person singular simple present unsigns, present participle unsigning, simple past and past participle unsigned)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To remove one's signature from (something one has signed).
   • 1942, in Life and Letters To-Day (edited by Robert Herring), volume 34, page 203:

     Listen : I say we signed, and there's no unsigning.

     And the voyage is never completed, though some may ask

     What creature is this, with the sea through his eyes looking[?]

     […]

     We signed and there's no unsigning.

     Hell, no, but she rolls

     And she rolls us like foam from her flanks, the gay mulatto.

   • 2010, Manual of Surgical Pathology (Susan Carole Lester; →ISBN, 3rd edition, page 38:

     UNSIGNING AND CHANGING A REPORT SHOULD ONLY BE USED IN VERY RARE CASES IN WHICH FAILURE TO CHANGE THE ORIGINAL REPORT COULD RESULT IN SIGNIFICANT HARM TO THE PATIENT.

2. (of a state, or those acting on behalf of a state) To declare void one's signing of (a treaty).
   • 2005, Michael Ignatieff, American Exceptionalism and Human Rights, page 137:

     Third, transnational legal process could be used to erode the force of the novel US tactic of unsigning the Rome Treaty.

   • 2008, John Bolton, Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations, page 85:

     Unsigning the Rome Statute. My happiest moment at State was personally “unsigning” the Rome Statute that created the International Criminal Court (ICC). […] bureaucrats urged at every turn that foreign governments would be extremely upset if we unsigned. In fact, only High Minded Europeans cared even slightly, which was simply further evidence that unsigning was the right thing to do.

   • 2011, Lee Feinstein, Tod Lindberg, Means To An End: U.S. Interest in The International Criminal Court, page 46:

     The administration took the unprecedented step of unsigning the treaty, entered into negotiations with over 100 countries to inoculate the United States from its provisions, […]

Anagrams

• Guinns, unsing